

Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime - jaggs
http://www.redferret.net/?p=28724

======
acabal
Nope. Ubuntu won't be ready until upgrading Firefox (or any individual
package) doesn't force insanity like opposite window controls or Unity without
asking. Regular people aren't interested in seeing drastic and seemingly
nonsensical changes like that for no reason, and almost certainly aren't
interested in being part of some grand OS experiment. They want something that
is consistent and works.

While package management is an excellent concept, the way Linux packages are
handled--with shared dependencies--is what engenders the ridiculous milestone-
distro system that I think is keeping desktop Linux back. Having to swallow
upgrades to every single package on the system just to get one package (like
FF) upgraded means that instability and unwanted change--exactly what regular
users hate--will be ingrained in the experience.

The solution, I think, is either to get rid of the shared-dependency concept
and move to a more Windows-like static install system, or form a truly stable
rolling-release distro. The only big one is Debian/Mint, but from what I hear
that's still too unstable for even power users.

~~~
rjbond3rd
> Having to swallow upgrades to every single package on the system just to get
> one package ... [means] ...instability...

Just curious, have you really experienced instability by installing all
updates on any mainstream distro? If so, could you share what happened? I've
not had that experience but would like to know about it.

~~~
acabal
Yes. For example when Ubuntu switched to Pulseaudio, it borked my sound. Even
with the release after that one (can't remember which one it was), I had to
have a shortcut on my desktop for 'killall pulseaudio' because just playing
music for more than 15 minutes would end up in garbled sound. Or in Karmic,
when a regression in the Intel video drivers made even dragging windows
stutter on my laptop with 4GB of RAM. Or when Lucid broke hibernate for my
laptop. It was fixed in Maverick, then broke again in Natty. Literally every
distro upgrade of Ubuntu for me has resulted in more than one serious
regression in something that used to work.

~~~
wazoox
Ubuntu and Fedora, though the most common desktop distros, also are
notoriously NOT very stable. Fedora is RedHat beta-test playground, and Ubuntu
is built from a Debian-unstable snapshot. OTOH many people complains that
Debian, RedHat or CentOS are too long to implement the latest features, but
this is the price to pay for extreme reliability. Know your needs, choose
accordingly.

~~~
shadowfox
I just wish there was a middle ground though where you dont have to choose
between extreme reliability + years of waiting and fast turnaround + notorious
instability

~~~
wazoox
Debian testing is both reliable enough (I think there were no more than 2
cases when an upgrade would lead to an unusable state in the past 8 years) and
not too far behind the bleeding edge. Or you could use a rolling release
distro such as gentoo, arch, or in a related world FreeBSD.

~~~
danieldk
The problem with Debian Testing is that once something breaks badly, you
usually have to wait two weeks until it is fixed, because changes need to
trickle down from Sid. In my experience, Sid is more useful as a desktop. But
it's certainly not for the beginner.

------
dorian-graph
What an awful article. Nothing here was 'new' but rather the same things that
have been said in near every other 'Year of desktop Linux!' articles. Replace
the post date with any year going back to ~ 2006 and it wouldn't be out of
place at all. Also, any writer that is suggesting primetime usage of a Linux
distribution and then suggests to use WINE or a VM solution is out of his
mind.

It's amusing how the writer referenced Ultimate in order to show the apparent
high cost of Windows yet how many people actually need Ultimate? Also, his
'success' story in regards to his wife isn't too realistic or at least
common—how many people have a husband who is willing to look for DbxConv (A
command app) and do all that work for her.

The site itself looks as if it's stuck a few years back. I'm a little
disappointed Windows ME wasn't referenced and no use of 'm$'.

~~~
hollerith
>Replace the post date with any year going back to ~ 2006 and it wouldn't be
out of place

There have been breathless articles about this being the year Linux is ready
for the desktop ever since the late 1990s.

------
Pewpewarrows
I used Linux (Ubuntu primarily, but I dabbled in the other distros from time
to time) as my only OS on my netbook for 5 years (through college and my first
few internships / job). For that atmosphere is was great: it taught me the
UNIX philosophy, I can work a command line shell and vim like a beast, I knew
a lot more about OSs and programming in general than if I was using Windows,
and it overall prepared me excellently for software development in the future.

That said, I was young and had the time to deal with its inadequacies. I could
spend a whole weekend getting a driver to work properly, and fiddling with
kernel options. These days I get a few hours of free time when I come home
from work, and then I have my weekend. If I am on the computer at all, I don't
want to waste my time dealing with that stuff any more. It's either to sit
down and knock out a sizable chunk of a personal project, or play some video
games for entertainment.

I have a proper place for all three OS flavors. My desktop runs Windows (for
gaming, heavy VM work, and games development), my primary development machine
is a Macbook Air (running OS X), and any servers I have run Linux. I feel like
these are the perfect tools for their respective jobs, now that money isn't a
factor as a poor college student. Using OSX over Linux as a development
environment was like night and day.

For servers, Linux is king. Having it be a usable personal OS (for the average
user and programmer) will take a lot more time. While it's true that most of
my time is spent either in the terminal or in the browser (I'd say about 75%
of my computer usage), for the other 25% paying for a machine that runs OS X
is completely worth every penny twice over. The quality of tools, utilities,
and applications that aren't a browser or terminal is light-years ahead of
anything that Linux offers, in terms of usability, UI, and functionality.

~~~
ori_b
> I could spend a whole weekend getting a driver to work properly, and
> fiddling with kernel options.

I haven't done that stuff since around 2005. I just install a standard distro,
and leave it to do what it does. It Just Works out of the box. It even detects
my Raid5 and sets that up for me. Debian is my choice because of the rolling
updates in testing -- I don't even want to think about version numbers.

I use Linux because it means I don't have to think about package versions, I
don't have to worry about finding drivers after installing, I don't have to
search around for software, etc. Thanks to distro choice, I don't even have to
think about what version I'm running.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
If you're lucky enough to own a machine that works out of the box, with all of
its components, while running Linux: all the power to you. I've owned many
computers over the years, of all shapes, sizes, brands, and/or custom parts,
and I've never had a single one "just work."

~~~
ori_b
I've had it just work on a Fujitsu tablet, several Thinkpads, and a couple of
HP laptops. And any desktop I've cared to try so far.

~~~
ineedtosleep
Pretty much what I was thinking. I've messed with Linux HP, Lenovo Thinkpads
and Ideapads, and most other major manufactured laptops. From Ubuntu, Fedora,
Arch, Slackware, Mint and plain Debian, I've never had major issues with
hardware.

IIRC, the last time I had a hardware/driver issue that pissed me off to no end
was back before Fedora even existed.

~~~
svnk
I have an HP dm1z, and I still haven't gotten the wireless drivers to work
(RALink)

------
drtse4
No,it's not.

The article seems to suggest that ubuntu is an OS that the non-geek joe can
install and use without experiencing any issues, it just works. Well, just
wait until he decide to upgrade to the next ubuntu release or try to install
some restricted driver. Good luck to these newbies if they don't have a friend
who knows linux.

I've just upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04 yesterday and only after 5-6 hours i've
found the right kernel+ati driver combination to make my system work again
(after the upgrade the GUI freeze after a few minutes of use, i've made a few
tests patching 2.6.38 for BigKernelLock, trying different driver releases,
checking the installed packages for incompatibilites,etc...). A newbie would
have never come out of this alive.

Imho, 11.04 shows that the Ubuntu releases are still made in a rush, with
unfinished things that get included anyway (Unity, but every release has its
own unfinished or barely working new functionality). My suggestion for Ubuntu?
Test more. And don't be afraid to push forward the release date if there are
still severe bugs open that need to be addressed.

~~~
rbanffy
> The article seems to suggest that ubuntu is an OS that the non-geek joe can
> install and use without experiencing any issues, it just works.

While my mother (a 76 year-old lady) asked me to install her computer, she has
been using her trusty IBM desktop always running the latest Ubuntu since 2006
or so. Never had an issue. She can read her e-mail, share files with friends.
The only ability she lost was to infect her machine with the most horrid forms
of malware. I don't think she misses it and I, certainly, don't.

------
rkalla
Ubuntu is no replacement for Windows. It can be a potential alternative, but
it is in no way some sort of drop-in replacement.

This particular article reeks of someone who doesn't actually need to get work
done "Free is unbeatable!" and "Windows is a poor value for the price!" --
uselessly ambiguous and all-inclusive statements.

If you are a PC gamer, big into video editing or professional image editor
using the Adobe suite, Linux is not an option for you. Please ignore all the
people that tell you WINE "totally works great" and has "no problems!" and is
"rock solid"... I would recommend jamming glass in your ears if you see
someone talking like that.

You are certainly welcome to try and take them up on that, but you'll decide
in under a month that all the little gotchas you only find once you dive deep
will drive you crazy.

I understand the intent of these articles ("The year of Linux on the
desktop!") but people have been writing them since 1998 and it has never been
true, all that has happened is each OS has grown up to fill its particular
niche and if your use-cases fall in that niche, then you are all set...
otherwise the move will be a complete waste of time for you.

The only reason Linux has been able to make more headway (IMO) is a good
majority of our lives have moved online with web-based apps so the reliance on
Linux matching parity with the software on other platforms has lessened.

There is no amazing new office suite for Linux, it's still OpenOffice and
always will be. I don't know if KOffice will ever hit critical mass or
individual GNOME-based efforts will grow beyond clean v1 implementations.

There is no fantastic PIM software that finally replaced Outlook.

There is no awesome, stable, robust video player except 75 different shitty
GUI interfaces to mplayer's codecs that work for the most part then core dump
sometimes oh but then are easily fixed by recompiling with the --bullshit flag
turned on.

It just goes on an on... of course your mileage will vary depending on what
kind of user you are, the more intense/hardcore you are the more warts you'll
notice and try and fix/workaround (key bindings, mouse button support, audio
card, hardware acceleration, optimal power saving management, etc.) and after
a month of pissing half your day away with some broken configuration for the
10th time, you'll go back to some other OS.

The lighter or more online user, you'll probably be just fine.

That is my own personal opinion from 13 years of trying to _finally_ adopt
Linux as my primary desktop OS, even giving up games to make it so and finally
giving up with Ubuntu 11.04 after realizing I was always going to have the
same magnitude of problems... no matter what.

Ok, I've lead with my neck out, everyone go ahead and comment about how their
desktop is "rock solid" and I must be brain-damaged and doing something wrong
consistently for the last 13 years to always have this experience.

~~~
akdubya
My 'buntu desktop environment is the most solid I've ever used, with the
caveat that once a year I can expect to spend a few hours in driver hell. I
think this balances out with the once-a-year BSOD hell I encounter on Windows.

I agree with you that WINE is terrible, but I have Win7 running brilliantly
right now on VirtualBox. Other than that, linux has all the specialized tools
I need for coding and web development, I switched over to console gaming a few
years back because I was tired of the hardware upgrade treadmill, and the
Microsoft productivity stack, while better than Libre Office, isn't compelling
enough to tie me to that platform. Also, I'm not sure what problems you had
with video players. VLC has served me well on Windows and linux.

I guess the real killer app for me is sudo apt-get install [some incredibly
useful open source library I really need right now, dammit]. The open source
infrastructure on Windows is so anemic it drives me nuts.

------
BenoitEssiambre
I find the UX in Ubuntu much better than Windows and OSX ( haven't tried
Ubuntu 11) mainly because of how fast and instantaneous everything is. Every
time I try a Windows machine I am appalled at how unresponsive it is and how
often programs freeze. OSX is better but I still find it has usability issues.
I think if I'd become a regular user of OSX and learn the keyboard shortcuts I
would be a satisfied customer. However, for a casual user like me (pretty much
just for xcode), I find myself often annoyed at my mac. I curse at OSX, every
time I use iTunes, every time I plug my iPod and the photo application locks
up my mac for seconds even though I've never used this application, when
windows pile up everywhere and there is no task bar to quickly switch between
them, only slow multiple step processes with annoying animations.

I'm also surprised at how many OSX features are a poor implementation of old
unix ide features. For example, I'm used to have multiple desktops on Linux.
I've been using this since the mid 90s. Gnome has it, kde has it, I've used it
on CDE the Sun interface. OSX has Spaces but it is horrible mainly because
there isn't a taskbar icon that allows you to switch 'space' with one click.
Worst even, the Spaces doc icon is a tease that looks like a proper desktop
switcher but doesn't work that way.

In term of hardware support (and to a lesser degree software support), I admit
Linux is behind. But this is a chicken and egg problem. If more people used
Linux, hardware manufacturers would make sure their drivers worked with Linux.
I have zero interest in doing manual configuration, so in the past ten years,
buying a computer has consisted of bringing a Live Ubuntu disk to Bestbuy and
poping it in to make sure everything on the computer works out of the box. By
using this method I never have to fiddle with anything to get Ubuntu to work.
It's very easy to do and my computers end up costing me half the price of macs
by allowing me the choice of a smaller 1.5 hour battery (I'm almost always
plugged in anyways) and lower quality display (so the contrast is not as good,
big deal). My current laptop is a one year old (corei3, 4GB ram, 500GB HD)
that cost me $600 (useless Windows licence included!) + $100 for a two year
extended warranty and Linux makes it feel much faster than any other computer
I use. Chrome on Ubuntu is a crazy fast web experience.

I've been hesitant to suggest Ubuntu to non technical users mainly because I
don't want to be responsible for providing technical support but I do believe
Ubuntu is probably ready for it. Maybe I should suggest it more given that
they call me for problems with their win7 or osx anyways and I often find
myself thinking: this wouldn't happen on Ubuntu.

------
MatthewPhillips
So who's going to step up and become the premier Linux hardware vendor? I was
just looking at Linux laptops this morning and the problem is battery life.
The System76 Lemur 13 gets... 2-3 hours of battery. That's not going to work.
The ZaReason Strata Pro 13 gets... I don't know because they don't advertise
it and I can't find a review that mentions it.

The conventional wisdom is to get a Thinkpad, which I might have to come to,
but it would be wonderful for one of these Linux vendors to step it up and put
out something that's competitive in terms of battery life with the
improvements that have come in recent years. Apple, Lenovo, Asus, even Toshiba
are all putting out laptops with 8+ hours of battery. I wouldn't consider
buying one that gets less than 6.

~~~
DanBealeC
Asus tried Linux on the EEE PC. They unfortunately tried an odd version called
Xandros, with some modifications and a cut down IceWM theme. I'm not sure they
enjoyed supporting it. This article says they've stopped pre-loading Linux:
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/196987/has_asus_abandoned_net...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/196987/has_asus_abandoned_netbook_linux.html)

and this article says they're going to start pre-loading Ubuntu:
[http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2075819/asus-
preloa...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2075819/asus-preload-
ubuntu-linux-eee-pcs)

~~~
Ralith
Good to know they know better than to write the whole thing off after making
some bad decisions.

------
rnadna
A few times a year, I download the latest version of star-office / open-office
/ libre-office and try it on a MSWord document from work. My most recent
attempt was 2 weeks ago. I have yet to see a correctly-formatted result. In
the beginning, simple things like bullets were wrong. These seem OK now, but
equations are completely messed up, as are figure numbers, etc.

This stream of office suites is probably fine for creating new documents,
especially if they are simple. But they still do not work adequately for any
task that involves collaboration on MSWord files.

I despise MSWord as much as one can despise any software. But if that is what
is demanded by a funding agency, I am quite sure I am not going to use
anything else.

~~~
dredmorbius
That (continues) to say much more about the inner brokenness of the Word "file
format" than attempts to reverse-engineer it. That's a quoted term as the
format has little to do with a typical mark-up-version-saved-to-disk, as was
standard on such modern formats as ... WordStar and WordPerfect in the late
1980s.

Granted, it doesn't help you much when you've got to interact with someone
using some random version of a borken instance of MS Word.

I'm aware that MSFT have moved to an XML-based markup, and that support may
have improved. I find the word-processing model (with its assumptions of a
static, un-shared paper-based document) fundamentally broken. Most of my
communications are in text files, Wiki documents, or on the odd occasion,
Google docs or similar which allow simultaneous shared online edits.

It's also curious that nearly 30 years since its release, there's no simple
reader for MS Word. Yes, Microsoft released one such. If you hit space (or any
other character), say, to scroll through the document as you would a 'less'
pager or PDF viewer .... a dialog appeared telling you that this was _not_ an
editor. Which you had to dismiss. Every. Fucking. Time.

And somewhere deep within Redmond, someone is still wondering why MS Word DOC
format didn't become a universal document interface interchange format.

------
alextp
Which is a pity when you think about how crappy and unfinished the unity UI in
ubuntu 11.04 is. In years this is the first time I've stopped using a standard
ubuntu (now I'm using Gnome 3, which is almost as bad).

~~~
jerhewet
Unity is the incarnation of everything I hated (and worked hard to disable) in
Windows 7. I rebooted and selected Ubuntu Classic as the default, and haven't
looked back.

~~~
alextp
At an internship at MSR I recently used windows 7 for real, and after I got
through the first week the general experience was maybe more pleasant than
ubuntu with unity. Even things that annoyed me at first (grouping windows by
program in the task bar, for example) grew slowly.

------
Hyena
Could this article be more wrong? I took the Linux challenge last month,
making Ubuntu my main OS. The experience was terrible and I switched back to
Windows. Linux is still _almost_ awesome and I've retained a Linux install as
a "work machine" to keep me away from my video games very nicely. But the fact
that I can successfully use Linux as an "isolation chamber" betrays the fact
that it's really not ready for prime time at all.

The first thing I'd say they need to fix is installation. There should be one
install protocol to rule them all. Whether the program apt-gets, installs .sh,
or just sits there and runs as is, it should be forced through a setup process
to remove user confusion. That might be as simple as a Python script that asks
where you want to copy files, but it just needs to be consistent for every
program. I never have to read an installation instruction or ReadMe on
Windows, why do I have to read one on Linux?

~~~
planckscnst
You pretty much just use the package manager for your distribution. The big
distributions have pretty much every program you're going to need. I barely
ever install something manually.

And for the things you do install manually, it's almost always one of two
methods. If the software creator is kind enough to provide a package for your
distribution, you download and double-click it. Otherwise, it's a .tgz file
that you extract and (almost always) do:

    
    
        ./configure && make && make install

~~~
Hyena
Yes, I'm aware and that's the problem: I have to be aware of this sort of
thing _even for consumer software_. Contrast Windows: I download, double click
and it goes. No knowledge needed.

~~~
blackguardx
But there is knowledge needed with Windows. You just already had that
knowledge.

------
padobson
I switched from a Mac with OSX to Ubuntu about a year ago, and I haven't
looked back. I'm a developer, and I have found that everything in the Linux
world seems to be set up with me in mind.

Dependencies are easier to install, there is a larger, more knowledgeable
support network (compare the Ubuntu forums to any Mac forum, it's not even
close), and I have discovered how powerful the command line is as a
development tool.

Also, when I run into a hitch during development, Google takes my operating
system into account. Googling answers to development questions provides me
much more relevant results on Ubuntu than it ever did on the Mac.

Plus, being able to develop web apps on the same or a similar operating system
to the environment it will be deployed on is incredibly convenient.

I will say that most of my leisure time now goes to developing personal
projects, rather than to gaming or other multimedia - things I often did on my
Mac. But I think that's a good thing. When I do invoicing or I need to work
with clients' data on spreadsheets, OpenOffice and LibreOffice, respectively,
have served me just fine.

If you live in a multi-computer household like I do, I think it makes sense to
have one machine that dual boots the latest Windows and Ubuntu to be able to
take advantage of games and other multimedia. However, for the PCs that are
only being used for day-to-day things like email, web surfing, and office
tools, then Ubuntu is the best value there is.

~~~
seminal
>Also, when I run into a hitch during development, Google takes my operating
system into account. Googling answers to development questions provides me
much more relevant results on Ubuntu than it ever did on the Mac.

This isn't said enough. Type a coding question into google and 9 out of 10
hits seem to be good tutorials involving the linux terminal.

------
norswap
"6. Linux makes older hardware sizzle."

No it doesn't. It might seem so because Windows "gets dirty" with time if not
properly maintened (running a defragmentation, removing unused programs and
residents, deleting temporary files, ... : things most people don't know/care
about). So to linux credit this should be "Linux does not get as dirty as
windows".

Even so-branded "minimalist" distribution make things like a pentium III seem
slow as hell. X itself is simply slow. On a netbook purchased in 2009, the
difference between running Win XP and running X is actually visible (greater
delays when switching windows for instance).

"8. Ubuntu is totally non-geek friendly"

> When you have used for a week you might say so. But changing even minor
> things to one's liking quickly becomes a pain in the ass and degenerates
> into wizard level hackery. On other OSes you can often rely on installing a
> freeware and for it to work out of the box. But the 100's of ways to do the
> same thing on linux + packaging issues and dependency soup makes it hell
> there.

"10. Security is a nice warm fluffy penguin feeling"

> Greetings from myth planet ! There's no reason things are inherently more
> secure on linux than on Windows, for instance. For both, the major problem
> is security breaches in applications.

------
bruce511
The point about it running well on old hardware is well taken. Installing a
new OS onto an old box very often results in an apparent speed-up. I was
amazed at how fast my old pc was when I upgraded to a new pc, and re-installed
XP from scratch on the old one. It was amazing. Unfortunately we then started
loading software on it, doing all the normal day-to-day stuff on it, and it's
since slowed down again.

Unfortunatly installing Ubuntu on _new_ hardware is a different thing
altogether. There you're far more likely to encounter problems as you have
newer hardware (espaecially graphics hardware). We got two new "desktop"
machines a year ago to use as file servers. Nice Intel motherboards,
integrated high-end graphics and so on. A week of trying though (and we tried
hard) and we simply could not make the graphics work right. And don't get me
started on the RAID support. In the end we started again with Fedora and were
up and running in a day. Fedora was more conservative with window transitions
and so on, but I could get it to run for more than an hour, and VNC worked.

We use Linux a lot for servers, but I'm in no rush to roll it out for
workstations. We'll keep trying every couple years, but it seems like 2 steps
forward, one step back sometimes.

~~~
larsberg
> Unfortunatly installing Ubuntu on _new_ hardware is a different thing
> altogether.

This. I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to install Ubuntu on one of the
new Toshiba Porteges. I was not expecting such terrible device support (built-
in Intel graphics would freeze or kernel panic in full-screen; insert/remove
to the HDMI port would cause X to run up to 100% of CPU and be unresponsive to
input; screen dimmer would seemingly randomly dim and light while I was
working; etc.).

~~~
wazoox
Unfortunately laptop support somewhat lags behind in Linux, mostly due to
bizarre hardware idiosyncrasies. Toshiba, Sony are particularly despised for
their botched BIOS and ACPI, strange hardware management, and complete lack of
alternate OSes support. Most of the time Asus, Dell and Lenovo laptops work,
though.

However it's unfortunately a good advice to always check with a live CD that
your distro actually supports decently the laptop you're about to buy.

------
navs
I've often been told that Linux will work well on old hardware. I can confirm
this is true with distros like ArchLinux but I've never had Ubuntu run well on
old hardware.

A year ago I got a free PC. A P2 with 128MB of RAM. Attempted to install and
run Ubuntu. Incredibly slow. I also attempted a windows XP install and I was
amazed to see that it ran just fine. Heck, I could even fire up VLC and watch
a video. Yes, it was slow but it was certainly more usable than default
Ubuntu.

Now my latest experience with Ubuntu comes from a new purchase of a netbook.
Samsung N150. It was cheap, it has 1GB RAM and an Intel Atom 1.66Ghz. I
decided to do a dual install of Windows 7 Starter and Ubuntu 11.04. Ubuntu
just chokes. Windows 7 fares better. Both are slow but windows is not
unbearably slow.

I've tried many distros and WMs and so far stock Ubuntu has provided me with
the simplest install but the worst performance.

Anyway, just my experiences.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _A year ago I got a free PC. A P2 with 128MB of RAM. Attempted to install
> and run Ubuntu. Incredibly slow. I also attempted a windows XP install_ //

It doesn't sound like you're comparing like with like.

XP was released in 2001. Last years Ubuntu was released last year, 2010 and
was targetted mainly at hardware that isn't 10 years old. You could at least
try Xubuntu or something that was made for old hardware. P2 came out in 1997
so XP working on it is not that great a surprise.

Try Win7 on that old PC and get back to us how well it runs ...?

FWIW I run Kubuntu 11.04 on an Athlon 1.1 with 768MB RAM - it's slow but works
without any real issues. I've tried DSL and Puppy on a pendrive and they both
pretty much blaze on this hardware.

------
wildgift
I've been using a Linux as my desktop for around a decade. It's great for
programming/programmers and sysadmin types. It runs the apps I need: perl, sh,
apache, php, vim, and stuff from the various software repositories.

When I need to interact with data from coworkers at my non-techie
organization, I use Windows. Why? Because the people there barely know how to
use MS Office, much less something more complex. We use Linux on servers, but
not desktops. Not yet at least.

When we need to deal with video, we send it out. We can do some in-house, but
it's time consuming and kind of expensive. We use Sony Vegas on Windows (which
is fine), but the real pros use Macs. So we have some Mac drives around.

The same goes for printing jobs. We do most of the in-house stuff in Office,
and I've been pushing Publisher (which is a POS, but is available). For
dealing with the outside world, though, I need to use Adobe Illustrator,
because that's the standard. (At home I use Inkscape.) At the printers, they
use Macs and PCs, but do most of the real work on Macs. The UI is just better.

The next platform is going to be the iPad. It's kind of a POS for non-
managerial work, but some people just use email and don't really do computer-
based work. They're already using phones, or just don't do the computer thing
too much.

The Linux desktop is not going to displace Windows. Windows' edge is not the
OS but the ISV (independent software vendor) environment. It's the most mature
low-end ISV market. The Mac's was decimated with the demise of the old OS, and
they're trying to rebuild it, but it's not doing well. The iTunes app store is
potentially a challenger. The Android market is not a challenger. Linux's
exists only for upper-end enterprise software.

Linux could displace Windows is by having a single dominant platform, and
having an app store for it that is successful enough to fund a software
ecosystem and pay the programmers. Then, people would choose Linux based on
the apps.

At least that's the business model that worked for the Apple II / Visicalc,
the IBM PC / Lotus 123 / dBaseII, the Mac / Aldus Pagemaker, Sun / SunOS and
later Java, and Linux as a datacenter node.

------
cageface
There is a version of Linux that's ready for primetime. It's called Android.
The desktop OS ship has sailed.

------
CrazedGeek
I actually agree with the article (having installed Ubuntu and Windows
countless times over the past few months made me appreciate how much nicer
Ubuntu is), but I take issue with one point:

"Windows is expensive and bad value for money."

No, it isn't expensive. You deliberately chose the version of Windows with
extra features that mean nothing to the average user. A more proper comparison
would be with W7 Home Premium, which at the linked site is £100. And that's
only if you're upgrading- most people just leave whatever Windows version that
was preloaded on their system on there, and there's rarely any reason to
actually upgrade (since W2000, anyway). It's essentially free.

------
planetjoe
I just returned to linux after a ~7 year hiatus and have found it to be a
night and day experience. My xp install had gotten so bad that I was forced to
escape and decided to try ubuntu on a whim. I'm so glad I did because the OS
is really snappy and I'm able to do everything I was doing on xp and I'm not
subject to random crashes. The reason I think ubuntu is ready for the masses
is because the install process, which is the first obstacle to adoption, is
mindblowingly fast and smooth compared to what it was like 7 years ago when I
was using debian 2.x. Two major pain points that are now fixed (at least for
me):

-The wubi installer lets you effortlessly install a dual boot win xp / ubuntu machine in about 45 minutes. Previously I would have to use QParted or Acronis to carve a new partition and then run a linux installer, which for me wasn't that bad, but would be unseemly for a newbie. With wubi, you set everything up inside of winxp and it reboots your computer, installs the distro, and you instantly have linux on a dual boot. Anyone, no matter how little computer knowledge, can give ubuntu a try because of this.

\- Driver support is much better than it was. It used to be a major pain to
get important hardware such as wireless and video adapters working. When I
installed this time, everything worked out of the box. This is huge for newbs.

After my latest ubuntu install, I'm going to try to fully transition my
personal computer to linux. I'm also comfortable recommending it to those less
computer savvy than me.

------
nnutter
This is an awful post. Starts with saying how Windows XP crashed and continues
with a bunch of anecdotes.

Here's another anecdote. I have yet to use Ubuntu on a machine where
everything just worked. I love Linux and use it every day. It's not ready for
prime time but it is, as it has been for almost 20 years, a reasonable
alternative for those willing to learn.

------
gorm
I actually remember Windows ME as a better OS than Ubuntu 11.04. It's bad and
not ready for primetime and it will take years before it's ready.

The last 6 months I was first forced to switch from Gnome2 to Unity because of
Ubuntu 11.04 and that made me ditch Ubuntu. I had heard so many bad things
about Gnome3 so I stayed away from ArchLinux and moved to Sabayon which still
had Gnome2. One month ago Sabayon did an update to Gnome3 and after testing it
for some time I decided to try Xfce (after the Torvalds post). I have spent so
many hours tweaking and finding the source behind bugs that it nearly makes me
cry.

There are so many small glitches and the only reason I stick with Linux on
desktop is because it's free and it brings me freedom. That's the reason
behind acceptance of all the glitches and mediocre user experience.

------
nickpinkston
My parents (mid 50's non-techies) run Ubuntu and love it. I installed it at
first, but they've been able to do the rest. Including installing the updates,
new printers, Chrome and similar things. I don't see how they can be that much
of an exception to the average Joe. Just an anacdote...

------
mark_l_watson
I thought this was an old article, from a few years ago. Seriously, Ubuntu has
been a decent OS for developers and also newbies for a long time. (I am
prejudiced - I downloaded Stackware using a 2400 baud modem (in 1992?), and
Linux has been core to my business since then.)

That said, Windows 7 and OS X are probably better for the consumer market.
Non-techie friends just bought a Windows 7 all in one computer (like an iMac)
and it is amazing what they got for $600 (including a touch screen!!), and it
all just works for them. I tried to give them a Mac last month and they
promptly returned it to me because of the learning curve for switching to OS
X, and the switch to Linux would be even more difficult.

------
mixmastamyk
Could be ready for primetime, but Ubuntu hugely suffers from a lack of QA
polish. Maverick was working well for me after lots of updates, but the
upgrade to Natty was a disaster ... a broken window manager which had to be
replaced. Volume doesn't stick after reboot, etc, etc.

Oh, and they love to remove working functionality and don't bother to replace
it. The services control panel, gone, no replacement. Sessions gone in Natty,
I now have to set up my terminal the way I like it every single time I log in,
etc, etc. Will write a script I guess. Constant churn, see pulseaudio and
unity.

I'm eager to hear recommendations for a more stable (fewer regression) distro
that keeps packages up to date.

------
switch007
How timely. I just spent 2 hours re-installing grub2 after Windows wiped it
out (I knew it was going to happen but I hoped it wouldn't be any trouble to
restore it). As I use LVM, I had to copy the /dev/dm-* devices to
/dev/mapper/<lv>-<vg> in order to install grub (this is what took 1h50mins to
figure out). Then I had to boot in to Ubuntu and update the grub config again
to pick up Windows.

That said, Ubuntu has improved _a lot_ and despite the grub issue, I still
love Ubuntu. I have converted both my parents to Ubuntu and I haven't had a
support call from them since the switch.

~~~
ZeroMinx
That's not Ubuntus fault. I'm thinking it wouldn't be easier to fix your boot
loader in Windows.

~~~
dredmorbius
Actually, it's pretty simple. Boot a DOS disk. Run 'fdisk /mbr'.

Mind: my preference would be booting FreeDOS, not some borken Microsoft crap.
But all the same.

My experience is that fixing Linux GRUB issues is also pretty straightforward.
Helps to understand chroots and stuff, but still: boot a bootable distro
(Ubuntu or Knoppix on a USB stick rawks), chroot into your installed root FS,
mount /boot if necessary, and run 'grub-install' or 'update-grub'.

Mostly just works.

------
olaf
As an Ubuntu user I think this is just wishful thinking. My estimation is,
that if Ubuntu has enough stamina and accelerates in the following years,
maybe in 10-15 years they come much closer to where Windows is today.

------
sneak
It can't sync music to iPhones or iPod touches. My dad loves his iPod and
would scream if I tried to replace it.

The ubuntu solution? Just run XP in a VM to run iTunes!

I bought him a Mac.

------
warmfuzzykitten
I don't think so. The user interface still looks like a dog's breakfast. When
was the last time you used Linux without opening a terminal session?
Installing new software can be incredibly tedious and error-prone. Drivers may
not work or be installed and need to be hunted down (the author raves about
how everything just worked out of the box, except of course that HP printer
driver, which he had to find - not easy - and install). Windows 7 and MacOS X
are ready for prime time. Linux is still an OS for hackers.

~~~
Will_Price
I disagree on "Installing new software can be incredibly tedious and error-
prone" with centralised package management, I much prefer installing something
on linux than in windows, all it takes is "pacman -S" whatever, or alias that
to something shorter, it also means searching for software is easy. In windows
I have to go and search for it on the net etc.

------
rickdale
I was introduced to Ubuntu in the fall of 2005. I remember when I got the free
disc to install and also how I struggled to get Ubuntu installed. The thing
that sticks with me though is the reason I was trying to install Ubuntu is
because it was already said to be ready for primetime.

Ubuntu walks the edge of good enough for random computer user/good enough for
super user. But in reality the facebooking/photosharing computer user would
rather not have to do it on Linux.

------
mvts
Ubuntu is great, I have it up and running on my laptop since about 2 years.
But I have WinXP, too. Just because I need Fireworks (I absolutely can't get
along with PS or Gimp) and Wine is okay, but it makes the applications so
slow...

That is really the only damned reason, I still have to switch between Win and
Linux on my Laptop. If Adobe's products would run flawlessly on Linux, I'd
never touch Windows again.

~~~
nzonbi
I used to be like that, until I tried Inkscape in Ubuntu.

Past the learning curve, and you will never need Fireworks again.

~~~
mvts
Hm yeah I recently discovered Xara Xtreme, what seems to be quite similar to
Fireworks from my point of view. I once tried Inkscape but it literally
grossed me out just like photoshop did. Maybe eventually I'll give it another
try.

------
jroseattle
The logic here is that Ubuntu is "ready for primetime" because of what
happened with another OS? For a single user?

This type of commentary simply places headwinds on Ubuntu and other Linux OSes
from actually gaining desktop traction.

------
rbanffy
If you develop software that runs on anything that's neither an Apple or a
Windows machine, Ubuntu has been ready for prime time since 2006 or so. It all
depends on what you use your computer for.

------
DenisM
So, 2011 will be the year when Linux goes mainstream on the desktop? At last!

------
joelhaasnoot
Tried Ubuntu 11.04 yet? Try that and write back to us. Their new unity
launcher isn't very good. Yes, there's ways around it, but that's the
default...

------
jpr
This is exactly the same article that has already been written by every geek
who blogs and has recently tried Linux. Nothing new or interesting. Flagged.

------
sid0
Year n+1 is the year of Linux on the desktop!

~~~
frou_dh
In other news, we've had several legitimate years-of-the-Unix-desktop courtesy
of Mac OS X :)

