
Will Linux Survive on Netbooks? - kqr2
http://linuxpundit.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/will-linux-survive-on-netbooks/
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3pt14159
I was forced to buy my netbook with windows ("it is the only one we have in
stock right now") and I wasn't willing to go through the hassle of getting a
$10 refund. I installed the very latest version of Ubuntu and I couldn't be
happier. Everything is fast. Really fast. With the 20 some odd terminal
commands I know I can install nearly anything I need (except MS Excel :{) and
there is no 30 day trial period that I have to be reminded of constantly, no
spyware (not that I ever got it anyways), built in programming stuff like
compilers. I'm by no means a serious programmer, just a quant that likes to
spend his weekends learning about polymorphism.

I've had such a good experience that I told my computer illiterate friend that
I will build his new computer for him for free, provided that he use Ubuntu
for 1 month. This guy doesn't know the difference between the terms "URL" and
"Web Browser" but I think that for what he does - movies, chatting, email,
surfing - he will have a far better experience. Why? No spyware and a much
easier UI.

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Herring
Why does it matter? This always struck me as a rather useless popularity
contest. I'm on ubuntu & except for games*, there isn't a single thing I'd
boot vista for. There's one or two long tail apps I'd like to have, but they
wouldn't help the linux community much.

[^] And seeing how they treat Macs, I don't think game publishers will put up
with developing for 3 platforms.

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philh
The eee PC and Aspire One, which I believe are two of the best-selling
netbooks, both have horrible distros. I gather netbooks were targeted for
doing internet and office, so the disros are optimised for doing that and
nothing else. If it turns out most people want to do more with their netbook
(which the hardware is certainly capable of), it's no surprise that they would
avoid linux when linux makes it difficult for them to do what they want.

Does any netbook ship with a non-crippled linux distro? I'd like to see sales
figures for that, especially compared to a windows version on the same
hardware.

~~~
skwiddor
I have an EEEPC 901 with Xandros. At first I was quite enamoured with it's
distro but it's not that great. The updater fills it up with updates until it
runs out of system disk space and I have to reset it, even though I have a
20Gb version (the sysem space is tiny [I don't have it with me so I can't
look]). The scheduler isn't very good, scrolling on Firefox comes in bursts
and often I think the thing has locked up. Firefox is probably not the best
choice because of its bloat (ironic from the light-weight mozilla!). That
said, when I ran Plan 9 in Qemu on it, I didn't find any such problems.

Web browsing on my G1 is a much nicer experience. I could seriously see
Android being a good fit with my EeePc.

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ZeroGravitas
He seems somewhat excited by the prospect of linux failing on notebooks, yet
I'm sure I read a rash of these articles a while ago when the Q1 numbers got
released, then another bunch when the numbers got disputed. What's he adding
to the debate now?

Nothing that I can see, though it appears he's got some axe to grind about
linux on smartphones being better than linux on netbooks.

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Tichy
Incredible news somehow. Users really liked using Windows better than Ubuntu?

~~~
patio11
1) Set your system's language to Japanese (or Swahili, or another language
which is totally foreign to your experience)

2) Go through a week of normal use, including both routine open-the-Internet-
and-send-email use and change-the-desktop-image level non-routine use.

You now know about one hundredth of the amount of pain a non-technical user
has when switching OSes. (P.S. She hates brown, cannot change the desktop
image, and her nephew who is good with computers doesn't know how to either
because none of the files he's describing are on the window and _this is so
frustrating_ to her.)

~~~
Tichy
The change the system language things hardly seems fair. Ubuntu is available
in most (all?) languages, and not very cryptic to understand either. In fact
it tends to be more logical than Windows.

Internet/Email: I tend to solve these issues by putting big fat icons for
Firefox and Thunderbird (+Open Office) on the desktop (and also in the "quick
launch bar" of course).

Desktop background: touche. But people who can't change it on Ubuntu probably
can't change it on Windows either?

Nephew: true - most people probably switch to Linux because their nephew tells
them to do so... So if the nephew is still on Windows, bad luck.

Also, maybe a lot of people just buy the netbook with Windows and then install
Linux anyway (bagging the free Windows license for later use).

Edit: one more thing that is easy to forget: make Open Office to use Microsoft
formats by default.

~~~
Poiesis
You missed the point. It wasn't that Ubuntu isn't localized, it was to attempt
to demonstrate the massive frustration users encounter when they don't know
how to do anything.

I have a Ubuntu netbook, and I'll agree Linux has come a long way, but when I
click on the friendly "you have updates" button and then break my wireless,
forcing me to track down drivers/packages I don't hold much hope for the
common people as it were. It was frustrating to me!

The language of typical Linux users is very much different than the language
of typical PC users I'd say. The ways we would describe a task are much
different and the things you learn on one platform often don't help you on the
other. A massive problem too is the fact there's essentially no configuration
management among Linux distros, making support a nightmare. What's the GUI
going to look like? What's the package manager going to be? Etc, etc.

I actually lied. The netbook _used_ to have Ubuntu, now it has OS X. It's
easier, even considering the hack to get it on there. Last time I owned a mac
was system 7, so it's not like there isn't a learning curve there. It's just
that they give a damn about the user experience, and as a general rule _will
not release_ unless they know the experience will be good.

~~~
Tichy
Yes, but my point was that it is not actually so hard to find out how to do
stuff on Linux. If you can read the language, you can find the "system
settings" menu - much easier than reading japanese.

"Normal" stuff that is - obviously if you have to fall back on the average
Linux tutorial, download drivers and so on, it is bad. But this shouldn't
happen usually. What did you do with the wireless drivers? I would have
thought that if a netbook comes with Ubuntu, the proper drivers would be
installed.

~~~
Poiesis
The dell-installed Ubuntu prompted me that there were updates available. I
downloaded/installed them, my wireless quit working. It was working before the
update.

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TweedHeads
FUD patrol is always protecting netizens from BS like this.

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DannoHung
Linux won't "win" the Desktop until there is a generational leap over other
OSes. Linux can't win because everyone else can see what Linux programmers are
programming and can copy all the ideas, if not the code outright.

I love Linux, don't get me wrong, but it's always going to be a second banana
for the consumer.

~~~
liuliu
I don't see any impact from "commercial" software to Linux. As all the
commercial software turns to online service, you have to pay monthly fee in
order to use the service. Linux will dominate the network market as it was
done in embedded system market because it can easily be customized. Any
software value on the customized distro (browser, email or IM) is included in
the hardware sales (like decades ago when we sold these "huge" computers).

