
Ideas Ubuntu should steal from Windows 7 - nreece
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/12-ideas-ubuntu-should-steal-from-windows-7-618472?src=rss
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TallGuyShort
It seems that on a lot of these points they fail to realize that they're
exactly the reason Ubuntu outperforms Windows in some of these areas. In
regard to backup software, they say, "Yes it's available, but why isn't it
there by default?" Perhaps it's because Canonical's stated goal is to fit an
entire operating system on a single CD. If they crammed in everyone's favorite
feature to the base distribution, that wouldn't happen. People are more
concerned with getting up and running with OpenOffice, email, etc...
immediately. If I want to backup my data, I'll worry about that once I'm back
to being productive. I'm happy to just grab it from the repository.

Also, I outright disagree with some of their observations about ease of use.
They say that Windows is actually pretty good at hand-holding when you
"troubleshoot" something. Me? I've never once had any success using the
"troubleshoot" tools to fix something. I've never once had a problem I
couldn't solve by a quick search of Ubuntu's forums/documentation and editing
the config files myself.

And I almost laughed when they said Ubuntu should use ideas from Windows
UAC... All in all, I really think this article fails to realize the difference
between Ubuntu and Windows. I don't think Ubuntu is trying to BE Windows. If
anything, they're trying to reaplce it (and I don't even think that's their
goal). There's no point in competing with Microsoft if you have the same
vision as them. Ubuntu has it's own goal, so does Mac.

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zimbabwe
Good arguments. Upvoted even though I disagree with many of them.

 _I've never once had a problem I couldn't solve by a quick search of Ubuntu's
forums/documentation and editing the config files myself._

That's a lot harder than what the average computer user wants. When I used
Ubuntu, I was terrified of the config files, and I hated forum searching to
solve problems. It seemed like such an inelegant solution.

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TallGuyShort
Yeah that's true, and I definitely think that Ubuntu is trying to move in a
more user-friendly direction than traditional Linux mindsets. In any case -
what has been your experience with the "troubleshoot" tools in Windows? It's
not that I'm arguing the point with you, I really do think they seem easy to
use. My only problem, is that it's never actually succeeded in fixing or
diagnosing the problem I was having. Am I alone in this?

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dan_the_welder
My experience has been that after a year or so using Ubuntu I am on a learning
curve, which was a bit frustrating at first.

My legacy Windows XP install makes me want to bang my head on the wall.

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rottencupcakes
In my opinion, there's one critical thing which is keeping Linux out of the
non-nerd workstation market, and that's X11.

The windowing system is slow, yet takes more CPU than Windows. Animations
(flash, the progress bar in fullscreen gnome-mplayer) bog down the system on
low-end graphics cards (which saturate the market in the consumer
desktop/laptop market). Scrolling a window up and down can be enough to lag
the system into unusability.

Microsoft invests hundreds of engineers on making the graphics system fast and
responsive on any kind of graphics hardware. Linux needs to catch up in this
field before they can play with the big boy. Someone needs to do something
with X11.

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GeneralMaximus
Right on. I have always felt X was a horrible idea. OS X's Quartz, on the
other hand, is a thing of beauty.

Is Google going to use X for the Chrome OS or will they roll their own?

EDIT: spelling.

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rms
I don't know if it's been stated officially, but nerd consensus seems to be
that Google will be using something other than X.

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Zak
I have to disagree on a couple points:

A single media player for audio and video is not desirable. They're separate
and almost unrelated functions; the only time they might belong together is
syncing to another device. That's not to say Rhythmbox couldn't use some
polish.

How, exactly is Gnome's panel crude? I find panel applets far more natural
than the system tray for little utilities that aren't part of a larger app,
and I really don't care for Apple's dock. Is there some justification for this
claim?

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rbanffy
In my experience, many people don't like Gnome because it doesn't look like
the desktop they are used to.

If I went back some 40 years and presented Gnome to IBM mainframe users, they
would complain the lettering is not green on black.

But I would love to have the 3278 font available on my boxes.

And no, it's not exactly the one on x3270. They got the 6's and 9's wrong

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Zak
I've found that reaction doesn't last very long. In fact, configuring any
Linux desktop to look extremely similar to Windows[0] leads users to think
_everything_ will be extremely similar. They tend to be more upset upon
discovering unexpected differences than they are when it's obviously different
from the start.

[0] I say Windows here because I've only seen in with Windows users. Users of
any other platform are used to the idea of different operating systems.

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th0ma5
A lot of times when I read these things, the sort of pro-Linux with pro-
Microsoft points articles, I can't help but feel it is paid for by Microsoft.
It certainly seems like I have been seeing more and more of these kinds of
things over the last few months.

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rbanffy
It seems Microsoft is boosting up their astroturfing groups. Watch out for
your karma ;-)

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zimbabwe
Are there any similar time-blocking options for the Mac? Sounds like a great
way to force somebody off the computer.

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DougBTX
Try parental controls in system preferences.

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zimbabwe
Thanks!

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rbanffy
Seriously lame. Flagged.

