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.
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.
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?
I would have to try Vista/Windows 7 to weigh in. I don't have pleasant Windows experiences at all, but I can't say right now that they haven't become a lot better.
I have to say that Ubuntu's forums and documentation aren't worth hardly anything. The forum is overloaded and there are so many new threads that very few of the threads will ever be touched or answered.
The documentation covers the basics, but it rarely helps if there is a problem.
I had a problem with graphics card issues last year and spent a couple weeks of research before finally finding a way to fix the problem myself. The forums and documentation didn't help.
And I found numerous other people asking the same question but not getting any answer. After I found the solution I posted it on their forum threads.
This is because you come to a rare and frutrating problem. This type of problems are not different on any kind of systems. They are hard to solve and low number of people tackle on them. If the problem having party is not some kind of big corporation or a person having influence over masses, that problem is non existant for the systems' producer.
The thing is, Linux distros, be it ubuntu or any other are bunch of software written all over the world, having no central design policy or architecture, put together. So making a real working and centrally controllable distro is virtually impossible or challenging. These software all have incostencies in their selves or in combinations. so solving most problems in their domains are the way to go. Because of general unix or linux philosophy of having text file based configurations, editkng these to solve most problems is unavoidable. Even gui software for configurations are generating or editing these files.
But diving and getting lost in windows registry is not elegant either..
I never had a big problem in Windows that I could solve at all. Each time I ran into a snag I had to reach for the manual or call support, it ended in either buying new, compatible hardware or reinstalling the machine.
The "troubleshooting" section in Windows help is every bit as useful as horns on a goldfish.
In my experience, the people on the Ubuntu forums only know how to solve trivial problems. There are tons of searches in Google that result in links to the forums where somebody is asking "Hey, this is my situation, can anybody help me?" only to see a response that is irrelevant or no response at all. I had to dig through the X.org wiki, which isn't terribly good documentation, to figure out how to disable mouse acceleration (after experimenting with where to put the settings).
Regarding the article: many of these points seem really vague or really nit-picky, like the bit about drive encryption.
I also agree with you about Ubuntu not trying to be Windows. I think they want to instill the paradigm if you're going to change a setting, be prepared to do it as a superuser or root ahead of time. Linux security isn't going to change to be more like Windows security.
Typical user behavior is to get productive, never worry about backups, and whine endlessly when their hard drive crashes. Backup software should definitely be bundled. It's a classic opt-in vs opt-out problem--users who have to opt in to install backup software, won't opt in.
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.
In my opinion, there's one critical thing which is keeping Linux out of the non-nerd workstation market, and that's X11.
In my opinion, that one thing is Unix.
The Unix model is full of philosophical details which are appealing to programmers, but which have been thoroughly discredited in the end user space: the minimization and generalization of APIs, the minimization and generalization of the notion of what a "file" is, the process or task based model of interaction, etc.
An end user OS needs to be document-centric instead of task-centric. It needs to have a spatial file manager, and support for that needs to be built into the filesystem. It needs a UI spec that is set in stone and backed up with usability research. The I/O patterns for a file on disk, the display, mouse, and sound card are all different; to get the most out of each the OS needs to provide for each specifically.
These things are precisely what made the original Macintosh such a revolution: the designers at Apple were willing to completely rethink what an OS is and should do. These days not even Apple is so bold, as its OS is basically a reskinned Unix. (Of course, consumer electronics and not computers are their new primary market and where they focus the most innovation.)
I've encouraged a number of people to give Linux a try on the desktop, and I've heard a complaint or two about it being too different, hard to use or missing some feature the complainer liked from another OS. I have never heard slow/unresponsive among the complaints. I've only heard this complaint from people who understood how X works and fundamentally disagreed with the design.
The windowing system is slow, yet takes more CPU than Windows.
Nothing that takes a lot of CPU is going to be faster than something that takes less CPU for the same amount of work, so the "yet" doesn't make much sense.
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).
I have a 10 year old PCI Matrox MGA 2064W Millennium that runs X just fine, all consumer level modern chipsets are more powerful than this ancient piece that I'm still getting use out of. How does the progress bar in full-screen gnome bog down the system? The progress bar only animates during video playback or during dragging, and during that time, the machine is busy seeking, decoding and drawing video, so that's the most likely candidate for system bogginess, not the progress bar in full-screen mode.
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?
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.
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.
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.