Ubuntu is easily as ready for the desktop and the "typical user" as Windows is. Your specific problems with wireless connectivity are completely resolved, as long as you manage to chose supported hardware.
Most of that stuff simply isn't true. Hardware generally works and the proprietary 3D drivers have perfectly good 3D performance. It's true that Windows software like games doesn't work, but that should be pretty obvious - no one gets confused or complains when their Mac won't run some Windows app, an Ubuntu system is the same.
Installing any operating system for the first time is a "project". It not an especially difficult project for a system like Ubuntu, but it's definitely not a trivial task to undertake. Computer experience makes it a bit easier, but there will still be points where you have to think a bit to figure out what to do next.
As I had no idea why, and not enough interest to find out, I simply shrugged and gave up.
If you had no interest in the project of installing a new operating system, you were doomed to fail to begin with. Even if it had installed perfectly, the first time it didn't immediately do something you already had working in Windows you would have given up.
People who are actually going to be able to install an OS on their own generally have at least enough interest to deal with a couple minor issues, whether they be beta bugs or Adobe Flash not being installed by default.
You don't compare "motherboard + processor consumption for both platforms" with two random motherboards... that's just stupid. You compare "min(motherboard)+min(processor)" for each platforms, or avg or max.
That's true, if the comparison is really going to be that sophisticated.
Here the component is the CPU, and that is what should be compared.
Only if you're working for the marketing department at Intel.
The fact of the matter is that the Athlon64 and Core 2 designs are different enough to make any direct comparison of power consumption misleading. A direct power consumption comparison is no more useful than directly comparing the TDP numbers that the two companies publish.
In order to publish an honest comparison of CPU power consumption, you would either need to compare MB + CPU platforms or publish the CPU power consumption numbers with a "The onboard memory controller on an Athlon64 consumes about X extra watts, on a Core 2 this power is instead consumed by the motherboard" disclaimer.
As for windows? Started up at 640x480, and, get this, DIDN'T HAVE DRIVERS FOR MY ETHERNET CARD. Microsoft is really going to have to work on this shit if they're going to make any progress in the desktop arena. If they can't get this right, just stop, I don't want to here your whiny MS-zealot crap, I don't have time for it.
Thank you. That's basically the whole story right there. If we're going to compare install experiences for operating systems, Ubuntu crushes Windows into the ground all day long.
If all you're doing is a simple Windows / Ubuntu dual boot system, the Ubuntu partition manager and Grub on the MBR works perfectly. If you want to mess with stuff like different versions of Windows you might need something like that, but for a basic dual boot system something like System Commander is a waste of money.
On the Ubuntu website they link to a bunch of places that sell Ubuntu CDs. None of them look to have any special link with Canonical, so that's a strong indication that it's OK to do it.
The 'radeon' driver works 100% for cards up to the 9250. For other 9 series and X series cards, it frequently works. For X1 series cards, saying that it works would definitely be exaggerating.
The biggest issue that a new user is likely to have with any version of Ubuntu is hardware support. Hardware support, especially for recent hardware, is much improved in each newer release. I would much sooner suggest the Feisty Beta to a new user on unknown hardware than Dapper, simply because the improved hardware support is likely to help them more than the little bit of Beta instability will hurt them.
Everything that you say is true, but remember one important thing: Comparing Athlon64 power consumption to Core 2 power consumption isn't an apples-to-apples comparison because of the memory controller. In order to get a useful comparison you need to compensate for that fact (the easiest way is to compare motherboard + processor consumption for both platforms).
Hmmm.... Have a second look at this link and see if you read it the same way that I do:
I read that as "the nuclear reaction is safe, but the sodium coolant itself could be dangerous" - i.e. that the worry is a big sodium fire rather than some sort of nuclear accident. The idea that the sodium is going to explode and somehow change the material properties of the fuel enough to change its passive safety is something that you seem to have come up with. I can't really visualize how it would explode inside the reactor core internal shielding unless someone went in there with a drill and a bunch of water to rapidly inject into the coolant pipes, and I can't really visualize how a sodium explosion would alter the reactivity of the nuclear fuel even if it was right next to it.
Some of us feel global warming is a danger to the ecosystems that sustain us.
Personally, I think that the ecological systems are much more resilient to the loss of a few specific species than that. I see global warming as more of a "tens of millions of lives lost to famine as traditional farming methods stop working when the climate changes" and "millions of lives lost to flooding as weather patterns get more erratic" sort of problem.
But... if you really believe that I don't see how you can possibly be against putting in modern nuclear power plants to reduce coal demand. Even if you did get a Chernobyl style accident every 20 years or whatever, that's nothing compared to the problems we'd have if we lost a bunch of food sources to ecological damage.
Actually, I see no reason why someone new to Linux wouldn't do fine with the Feisty Beta - as long as they understand the concept of Beta software and won't be too disappointed if something breaks. The Feisty beta seems pretty stable, and includes some stuff like Compiz that might be fun for a new user.
Just remember, if you're using beta software: If it breaks you get to keep both pieces - after you report the bug.
Windows is built to magically "fix itself" in a couple cases where Ubuntu wouldn't, but I've found that systems that magically fix themselves sometimes also can magically break themselves.
I read that there is a 30% performance increase by having a 64only OS, anyone know anything about this?
There is a slight performance benifit to running 64 bit, but it's not worth worrying about. It can be as much as 15 - 20% in rigged benchmarks, and even higher in 64-bit specific code (you don't have any), but it's more like 3% for using real-world apps. Compared to the hassle of running non-native code, the minor performance gain is rarely worth it.
I hope they fixed the 64bit flash issue with firefox and got wine ported to work on 64bit ubuntu. I am still waiting on 64bit version of wine, there are some docs on howto get 32bit wine installed on the Ubuntu forum.
If you're going to be messing with Wine, it's definitely not worth screwing around with the 64 bit version of Ubuntu. It's possible to get flash working, but 32 bit windows code really wants to run in 32 bit mode. It really wants to run on Windows, but if you're determined to run it on Linux you're better off keeping your silly tasks to just "I'm running code on the wrong OS" rather than "I'm running code on the wrong OS and the wrong CPU architecture".
That better not be true, because it's impossible. But we know that it it isn't true - Mac OS X and Windows Vista are far from flawless, and yet people still manage to muddle their way through using those systems. In fact, lots of people manage to use Ubuntu right now even with a couple of bugs.
The fact that it neither recovers in that situation nor gives the "correct" command to recover is legitimately a serious problem - I hope you filed a bug on it - but it shouldn't seriously prevent anyone from being able to use the system. Pasting any chunk of the error message into google gives the answer, as does asking anyone who knows anything about Ubuntu directly.
Switching to any different operating system will be non-trivial, unless someone else is administering it. There's no way around that, however much people trying to switch to various Linux distros demand that it not be so. Ubuntu is well beyond the point where anyone can easily use it if they are willing to slog through the difficulties of learning the basics of a new system - and no new system can ever be significantly better than that.
Well, the scaling up for WWII took less than ten years so I'm not sure where the impossible part comes in.
Ramping up production for an obvious war is much easier than, say, making cars or fertilizer illegal would be. Global warming simply isn't as clear and present a danger as "most of Europe has been conquered" was. It's important, but the USA isn't going to give up cars and suburbia over it.
Renewables are being put into use now so they seem to have a bit of a head start on even planning for new nuclear plants which have to go through public review and legal challenges.
Have a sense of scale and be realistic. There is no politically feasible government policy that would allow production of windmills and photocells to ramp up fast enough to supply the majority of the power in the United States by 2016. Further, based on my local politics, it looks like every windmill has to go through years of public review and legal challenges.
Short of a drastic, politically-impossible democracy-straining government intervention it looks to be economically possible to implement policies that will reduce (not eliminate) the damage that will be caused by global warming. Policies like progressively decreasing carbon caps are what is going to work, if we manage to do anything at all. Those policies just need to go into place soon enough that we stop building more coal plants. If such policies do get put into place and stay in place, they will eventually reduce carbon emissions to acceptable levels. If we don't give the big power companies a good alternative to coal plants by legalizing modern nuclear reactors, they'll spend all their money lobbying against the carbon caps and getting exemptions instead. I'd rather have the nukes than the coal plant carbon exemptions.
I've noticed that in all your statements about nuclear safety, you are assuming that the primary coolant is present and working. Especially for Indian Point, it is not at all clear that the coolant would always be present.
For modern designs, all my references indicate that they fail gracefully in the face of complete coolant loss. I gave one reference earlier for the IFR and asked for a contradicting reference.
For obsolete PWRs in production, you're right that they are vulnerable to meltdown in the event of coolant loss. The coolant won't just vanish - in the event of a leak or something there will be time to react. There are multiple redundant monitoring systems, and there are people on site who are tasked with hitting the SCRAM button if there is a coolant alarm and the primary automatic safety systems fail. A severe, containment-breaching meltdown isn't impossible - but it would probably require multiple plant personnel intentionally conspiring to sabotage the plant.
Our position is to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2016
That's the sort of reduction that would be necessary to have a significant impact on global warming. I'm pretty sure it's strictly impossible. Not "impossible with photovoltaics" or "impossible with renewables" but "strictly impossible".
To begin with, there are two many carbon sources. There are no good replacements for cars and there are no good replacements for some of the industrial processes that emit carbon. Even for the one area where there are good replacements - electricity generation - you aren't willing to accept the only technology that might be possible to put into production that quickly.
In order to actually accomplish that carbon reduction goal that quickly, you'd have to send in the jackbooted thugs and force people to shut down their industrial operations at gunpoint. That would cause much more damage to the economy than even the most extreme estimates of global warming (i.e. the sea level rises 2 meters in 50 years).
a pay out under the Price-Anderson Act for even a moderate scale disaster similar to Chernobyl at, say, the troubled Indian Point reactor
The nuclear reactors in production in the United States are really crappy, but they're not going to have an accident like Chernobyl. An accident like Chernobyl required an innately dangerous plant design, incompetent operators, and a really stupid experiment.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US have containment buildings to keep really bad accidents confined to the plant rather than spreading as radioactive plumes over miles.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US don't have positive void coefficients. When they heat up that doesn't cause the reaction to speed up.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US have control rods that actually slow the reaction down - the Chernobyl control rods actually *speed up* the reaction momentarily when they are activated. (the operators didn't know this when they caused the disaster)
I'm not going to say we can't possibly have another accident like Three Mile Island. I'm not even going to say we can't have an accident where people actually die. But... worrying about fallout and off-site radiation deaths from nuclear power accidents is a waste of time. A rogue meteor impact is much more likely.
It being physically possible to build plants that fast doesn't make it economically likely. In california, per-capita energy consumption does not equate to gross energy consumption.
I don't think it's reasonable to bet the stable climate of the entire planet on an exponential uptake of photovoltaics combined with an unprecedented level of individual power conservation. Consumer adoption simply doesn't scale up that fast for *any* product, and conservation remains the fool's hope it was in the 1970's.
If we want to stop dumping billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, we need to burn less coal. Actually burn less coal. Not hope that we might burn less coal in the future, not have discussions about the safety of nuclear power while more coal plants get built... actually stop burning so much of it.
There are absolutely people who make a living solely on "intellectual property". There are even people who make a living on trademarks. These people are called "intellectual property lawyers". They are mostly scum who seek to exploit the law in whatever way they can to come up with ways their clients can squelch creativity and the propagation of knowledge for profit.
Restricting the activities of someone who lives in a dorm to "educational" activities is absurd. We're talking about a place that will be someone's home for years. It's damn well reasonable that they should expect to have fully functional internet access. What's next, they shouldn't be allowed a TV because it wastes taxpayer-funded electricity? We're talking about universities here, not prisons or convents - there's no reason to interfere with non-destructive leisure activities.
On a time scale choice, how about the Moore's Law scale since it is silicon after all.
How about... no. Moores law is completely unrelated... it is about cramming more transistors onto the same area of silicon by reducing the size of each transistor. You can't make solar cells smaller without a corresponding efficiency increase, and that's damn hard. We're talking about production capacity here, and even production capacity *for* production capacity. Doubling every five years is about the speed at which the semiconductor industry grew in the 1970s through the 1990s - I seriously doubt that photovoltaics can match that, much less beat it.
As you'll see in the link to the meeting, California has already done what you ask.
Through extensive regulation, California has managed to... slow down the increase in power consumption somewhat. If you look at the table, there are a couple years where they mananged a temporary decrease, but the dominant trend continues to be a steady increase in power consumption. Even with ridiculous energy prices and occasional rolling blackouts, they still use more power. California is definitely not evidence that power consumption will decrease in the face of a lowered price.
Slashdot Mirror
It's entirely clear how to pronounce it - just like the guy in the video "German Air Traffic Control" does.
http://www.novell.com/video/ (Sixth video down)
Ubuntu is easily as ready for the desktop and the "typical user" as Windows is. Your specific problems with wireless connectivity are completely resolved, as long as you manage to chose supported hardware.
Most of that stuff simply isn't true. Hardware generally works and the proprietary 3D drivers have perfectly good 3D performance. It's true that Windows software like games doesn't work, but that should be pretty obvious - no one gets confused or complains when their Mac won't run some Windows app, an Ubuntu system is the same.
Installing any operating system for the first time is a "project". It not an especially difficult project for a system like Ubuntu, but it's definitely not a trivial task to undertake. Computer experience makes it a bit easier, but there will still be points where you have to think a bit to figure out what to do next.
If you had no interest in the project of installing a new operating system, you were doomed to fail to begin with. Even if it had installed perfectly, the first time it didn't immediately do something you already had working in Windows you would have given up.
People who are actually going to be able to install an OS on their own generally have at least enough interest to deal with a couple minor issues, whether they be beta bugs or Adobe Flash not being installed by default.
That's true, if the comparison is really going to be that sophisticated.
Only if you're working for the marketing department at Intel.
The fact of the matter is that the Athlon64 and Core 2 designs are different enough to make any direct comparison of power consumption misleading. A direct power consumption comparison is no more useful than directly comparing the TDP numbers that the two companies publish.
In order to publish an honest comparison of CPU power consumption, you would either need to compare MB + CPU platforms or publish the CPU power consumption numbers with a "The onboard memory controller on an Athlon64 consumes about X extra watts, on a Core 2 this power is instead consumed by the motherboard" disclaimer.
Thank you. That's basically the whole story right there. If we're going to compare install experiences for operating systems, Ubuntu crushes Windows into the ground all day long.
If all you're doing is a simple Windows / Ubuntu dual boot system, the Ubuntu partition manager and Grub on the MBR works perfectly. If you want to mess with stuff like different versions of Windows you might need something like that, but for a basic dual boot system something like System Commander is a waste of money.
On the Ubuntu website they link to a bunch of places that sell Ubuntu CDs. None of them look to have any special link with Canonical, so that's a strong indication that it's OK to do it.
The 'radeon' driver works 100% for cards up to the 9250. For other 9 series and X series cards, it frequently works. For X1 series cards, saying that it works would definitely be exaggerating.
The biggest issue that a new user is likely to have with any version of Ubuntu is hardware support. Hardware support, especially for recent hardware, is much improved in each newer release. I would much sooner suggest the Feisty Beta to a new user on unknown hardware than Dapper, simply because the improved hardware support is likely to help them more than the little bit of Beta instability will hurt them.
Unless the images are really massive, a couple thousand pictures wouldn't take that long to crunch through on any modern processor.
If they *are* really massive, you're going to be bottlenecked on memory bandwidth which is somewhat better on AMD processors.
Everything that you say is true, but remember one important thing: Comparing Athlon64 power consumption to Core 2 power consumption isn't an apples-to-apples comparison because of the memory controller. In order to get a useful comparison you need to compensate for that fact (the easiest way is to compare motherboard + processor consumption for both platforms).
I read that as "the nuclear reaction is safe, but the sodium coolant itself could be dangerous" - i.e. that the worry is a big sodium fire rather than some sort of nuclear accident. The idea that the sodium is going to explode and somehow change the material properties of the fuel enough to change its passive safety is something that you seem to have come up with. I can't really visualize how it would explode inside the reactor core internal shielding unless someone went in there with a drill and a bunch of water to rapidly inject into the coolant pipes, and I can't really visualize how a sodium explosion would alter the reactivity of the nuclear fuel even if it was right next to it.
Personally, I think that the ecological systems are much more resilient to the loss of a few specific species than that. I see global warming as more of a "tens of millions of lives lost to famine as traditional farming methods stop working when the climate changes" and "millions of lives lost to flooding as weather patterns get more erratic" sort of problem.
But... if you really believe that I don't see how you can possibly be against putting in modern nuclear power plants to reduce coal demand. Even if you did get a Chernobyl style accident every 20 years or whatever, that's nothing compared to the problems we'd have if we lost a bunch of food sources to ecological damage.
Actually, I see no reason why someone new to Linux wouldn't do fine with the Feisty Beta - as long as they understand the concept of Beta software and won't be too disappointed if something breaks. The Feisty beta seems pretty stable, and includes some stuff like Compiz that might be fun for a new user.
Just remember, if you're using beta software: If it breaks you get to keep both pieces - after you report the bug.
Windows is built to magically "fix itself" in a couple cases where Ubuntu wouldn't, but I've found that systems that magically fix themselves sometimes also can magically break themselves.
There is a slight performance benifit to running 64 bit, but it's not worth worrying about. It can be as much as 15 - 20% in rigged benchmarks, and even higher in 64-bit specific code (you don't have any), but it's more like 3% for using real-world apps. Compared to the hassle of running non-native code, the minor performance gain is rarely worth it.
If you're going to be messing with Wine, it's definitely not worth screwing around with the 64 bit version of Ubuntu. It's possible to get flash working, but 32 bit windows code really wants to run in 32 bit mode. It really wants to run on Windows, but if you're determined to run it on Linux you're better off keeping your silly tasks to just "I'm running code on the wrong OS" rather than "I'm running code on the wrong OS and the wrong CPU architecture".
That better not be true, because it's impossible. But we know that it it isn't true - Mac OS X and Windows Vista are far from flawless, and yet people still manage to muddle their way through using those systems. In fact, lots of people manage to use Ubuntu right now even with a couple of bugs.
The fact that it neither recovers in that situation nor gives the "correct" command to recover is legitimately a serious problem - I hope you filed a bug on it - but it shouldn't seriously prevent anyone from being able to use the system. Pasting any chunk of the error message into google gives the answer, as does asking anyone who knows anything about Ubuntu directly.
Switching to any different operating system will be non-trivial, unless someone else is administering it. There's no way around that, however much people trying to switch to various Linux distros demand that it not be so. Ubuntu is well beyond the point where anyone can easily use it if they are willing to slog through the difficulties of learning the basics of a new system - and no new system can ever be significantly better than that.
Ramping up production for an obvious war is much easier than, say, making cars or fertilizer illegal would be. Global warming simply isn't as clear and present a danger as "most of Europe has been conquered" was. It's important, but the USA isn't going to give up cars and suburbia over it.
Have a sense of scale and be realistic. There is no politically feasible government policy that would allow production of windmills and photocells to ramp up fast enough to supply the majority of the power in the United States by 2016. Further, based on my local politics, it looks like every windmill has to go through years of public review and legal challenges.
Short of a drastic, politically-impossible democracy-straining government intervention it looks to be economically possible to implement policies that will reduce (not eliminate) the damage that will be caused by global warming. Policies like progressively decreasing carbon caps are what is going to work, if we manage to do anything at all. Those policies just need to go into place soon enough that we stop building more coal plants. If such policies do get put into place and stay in place, they will eventually reduce carbon emissions to acceptable levels. If we don't give the big power companies a good alternative to coal plants by legalizing modern nuclear reactors, they'll spend all their money lobbying against the carbon caps and getting exemptions instead. I'd rather have the nukes than the coal plant carbon exemptions.
For modern designs, all my references indicate that they fail gracefully in the face of complete coolant loss. I gave one reference earlier for the IFR and asked for a contradicting reference.
For obsolete PWRs in production, you're right that they are vulnerable to meltdown in the event of coolant loss. The coolant won't just vanish - in the event of a leak or something there will be time to react. There are multiple redundant monitoring systems, and there are people on site who are tasked with hitting the SCRAM button if there is a coolant alarm and the primary automatic safety systems fail. A severe, containment-breaching meltdown isn't impossible - but it would probably require multiple plant personnel intentionally conspiring to sabotage the plant.
That's the sort of reduction that would be necessary to have a significant impact on global warming. I'm pretty sure it's strictly impossible. Not "impossible with photovoltaics" or "impossible with renewables" but "strictly impossible".
To begin with, there are two many carbon sources. There are no good replacements for cars and there are no good replacements for some of the industrial processes that emit carbon. Even for the one area where there are good replacements - electricity generation - you aren't willing to accept the only technology that might be possible to put into production that quickly.
In order to actually accomplish that carbon reduction goal that quickly, you'd have to send in the jackbooted thugs and force people to shut down their industrial operations at gunpoint. That would cause much more damage to the economy than even the most extreme estimates of global warming (i.e. the sea level rises 2 meters in 50 years).
The nuclear reactors in production in the United States are really crappy, but they're not going to have an accident like Chernobyl. An accident like Chernobyl required an innately dangerous plant design, incompetent operators, and a really stupid experiment.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US have containment buildings to keep really bad accidents confined to the plant rather than spreading as radioactive plumes over miles.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US don't have positive void coefficients. When they heat up that doesn't cause the reaction to speed up.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US have control rods that actually slow the reaction down - the Chernobyl control rods actually *speed up* the reaction momentarily when they are activated. (the operators didn't know this when they caused the disaster)
I'm not going to say we can't possibly have another accident like Three Mile Island. I'm not even going to say we can't have an accident where people actually die. But... worrying about fallout and off-site radiation deaths from nuclear power accidents is a waste of time. A rogue meteor impact is much more likely.
It being physically possible to build plants that fast doesn't make it economically likely. In california, per-capita energy consumption does not equate to gross energy consumption.
I don't think it's reasonable to bet the stable climate of the entire planet on an exponential uptake of photovoltaics combined with an unprecedented level of individual power conservation. Consumer adoption simply doesn't scale up that fast for *any* product, and conservation remains the fool's hope it was in the 1970's.
If we want to stop dumping billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, we need to burn less coal. Actually burn less coal. Not hope that we might burn less coal in the future, not have discussions about the safety of nuclear power while more coal plants get built... actually stop burning so much of it.
You don't think that "would" can be validly followed by "of" in an English sentence? It would, of course, be valid in this sentence.
There are absolutely people who make a living solely on "intellectual property". There are even people who make a living on trademarks. These people are called "intellectual property lawyers". They are mostly scum who seek to exploit the law in whatever way they can to come up with ways their clients can squelch creativity and the propagation of knowledge for profit.
Die in a fire.
Restricting the activities of someone who lives in a dorm to "educational" activities is absurd. We're talking about a place that will be someone's home for years. It's damn well reasonable that they should expect to have fully functional internet access. What's next, they shouldn't be allowed a TV because it wastes taxpayer-funded electricity? We're talking about universities here, not prisons or convents - there's no reason to interfere with non-destructive leisure activities.
How about... no. Moores law is completely unrelated... it is about cramming more transistors onto the same area of silicon by reducing the size of each transistor. You can't make solar cells smaller without a corresponding efficiency increase, and that's damn hard. We're talking about production capacity here, and even production capacity *for* production capacity. Doubling every five years is about the speed at which the semiconductor industry grew in the 1970s through the 1990s - I seriously doubt that photovoltaics can match that, much less beat it.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/consumption_b y_sector.html
Through extensive regulation, California has managed to... slow down the increase in power consumption somewhat. If you look at the table, there are a couple years where they mananged a temporary decrease, but the dominant trend continues to be a steady increase in power consumption. Even with ridiculous energy prices and occasional rolling blackouts, they still use more power. California is definitely not evidence that power consumption will decrease in the face of a lowered price.