

Ubuntu: What They're Doing Right and Wrong - unstoppableted
http://www.datamation.com/open-source/ubuntu-what-theyre-doing-right-and-wrong-1.html

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Falkvinge
The idea that "parental controls" are needed is contradictory to the entire
philosophy of Open Source and Free Software. Parental controls - or, as it
should be called, parental censorship - is a "feature" that treats the user as
an ADVERSARY.

It belongs in the exact same category of "features" as mandatory wiretapping
on telecom networks and mandatory tracking on cellphones, and other inventions
that treat the user as an adversary. It also belongs in the trashcan.

To people who want this to babysit their kids - no, you don't get to abdicate
your parenting to a piece of code doing censorship.

~~~
calpaterson
You've conflated owners and users. FOSS movements are advocating owners'
rights, and only users' rights when the "real" owner of a piece of software or
a computer has been demoted to a user.

That's why FOSS software like NFS respects file permissions, and web servers
include HTTP-Auth.

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rmk2
I am in two minds about the "community" aspect of Ubuntu. It is true that
Ubuntu has many users. Subsequently, whenever you run into a question, you
will get lots of Ubuntu-specific posts. The problem I see with this is,
however, that with a higher volume comes a higher number of a) unanswered or
b) duplicate or c) redundant questions/answers, and since Ubuntu markets
itself as "the distribution for everyone", many questions are very basic (→
"signal-to-noise", etc.).

The Arch wiki, on the other hand, often offers in-depth writeups, guides and
howtos, simply because that is its philosophy and it is geared towards a more
proficient but therefore also significantly more specialised userbase.

Now, I use neither Ubuntu nor Arch, yet I find the Arch community's work
infinitely more helpful and transferable than the documentation churned out by
the Ubuntu machinery.

Size is a double-edged sword, you have a better chance of finding something,
yet finding good solutions becomes substantially harder,

~~~
lawn
Agreed. Often when I'm searching for a problem I stumble on the Arch wiki (I
don't use Arch) and it has often been the perfect thing for me.

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milliams
I'm confused by Ubuntu being called out as specifically having "great [..]
hardware compatibility". I've been using SUSE for 10 years now and I've never
had a single peripheral which didn't work out the box. This is down to the
great work of the Linux and driver developers rather than Ubuntu itself.

~~~
zorlem
The great hardware support is indeed provided by the kernel, but out of the
box it's nowhere near pain-free. In particular when you have to setup your
wireless or video drivers. Sadly, these two still often require binary drivers
and picking from several options. One specific example (mentioned in the OP as
well) is with the wireless drivers - there usually are at least two options
that provide some support and usually one of them is better. I've had to
configure some Broadcom WiFi support and there are three different solutions -
ndiswrapper, binary blob provided by Broadcom and the driver in the kernel.
Picking one of the three is a time consuming and complicated process on other
distros and nowhere near easy and accessible to new users.

Ubuntu on the other hand, with their driver manager, picked the correct
driver, downloaded the required bits and pieces, and configured them all
without needing to do anything else. The same can be said for eg. NVidia
support.

This in my book is a clear win for Ubuntu.

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macspoofing
Parental controls and migration wizard are the only things the author cited as
needing improvement? Come on! Here's my two cents: Ubuntu, and other Linux
distros, have the technical side locked up. Now they need to adopt some sort
of a design-centric approach to their development efforts. This is where the
failure has been. The frontend experience has never sparked anyone's
imagination. I'm sure all the major distros are well put together but they
_all_ look like they came from the windowsXP era. There's also a tendency to
copy windows and mac desktop look-and-feel almost to a fault. The funny thing
is that both Microsoft and Apple have shown to be willing to make drastic
changes to their flagship products. It makes them look like trailblazers and
the open source guys look conservative.

~~~
Shorel
It is very clear that you have not used the latest Ubuntu with Unity.

In fact, Ubuntu is the only distro that has done anything innovative in that
area. Some old linuxers hate it but that's life.

Right now I'm using Ubuntu precisely because of that. It is the first Linux
that looks better and really different to the old Mandrake I used to run back
then.

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toddnessa
I have used Ubuntu since 2008. I have seen it grown increasingly more user
friendly over the years. I have always been impressed with it's stability and
would never go back to running Windows. If you want something that is easier
on your equipment then this is a great option.

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elktea
The article doesn't cover the server side of things, which is a shame.

I've been experimenting with Ubuntu due to their native JeOS tools and so far
so good. I'd be curious as to how different Debian Wheezy and Ubuntu Precise
are these days, from a server point of view.

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TazeTSchnitzel
The complaints about the parental controls options suggested are stupid.
That's the Ubuntu wiki.

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DrHyde
Why are parental controls even on this list? Is this really such a pressing
issue? I think he should have taken a different angle on this, seemed to me
like he just ran out of things to criticize.

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rlpb
What is the Windows solution for parental controls?

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sp332
The built-in "Parental Controls" are pretty rough. You can set time limits on
user account, set maximum ESRB ratings for games, and block specific programs.
[http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-can-I-
contr...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-can-I-control-with-
Parental-Controls) Microsoft also has a first-party program with slightly more
refined capabilities called Family Safety. You have to sign in to a website
for that though. The one feature I like about it is that a kid can send a
request for specific exceptions that can be reviewed by the parent.

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lucian1900
Do people actually use Parental Controls? Why?

~~~
hollerith
You've never been a parent, have you?

~~~
lucian1900
I'm seriously trying to understand why they would be used. I see them focused
on nudity and porn, but neither has harmed any child. Very rarely are they
focused on violence, but that's available readily anyway.

~~~
jeremyjh
So the answer is "no, not a parent".

~~~
lucian1900
I'm not a parent.

Why would you want your child to not see nudity? I've seen nudity as a child
and I'm fine.

~~~
tartuffe78
Regardless of how you feel about the matter, you must be aware that a large
amount of the world feels that children should be sheltered from sex & nudity
in general.

Also there are a lot more offensive / graphic things on the internet than
simple nudity. No parent, no matter how liberal, wants their child to see 2
girls 1 cup.

