Out the Window (WSJ) [LWN.net]

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 19:03 UTC (Tue) by zgoda (guest, #36215) [Link] (7 responses)

It took me a whole evening (about 4 hours) to get Ubuntu 5.10 to nearby state to what I can call work-ready machine, with all multimedia functionality. I don't count time spent on building my own packages with J2SDK 1.4.2 and 1.5.0 (I need both versions) -- thanks God, I knew how to do it. This was only a matter of downloading and installing numerous multimedia-support packages. And it took ages.
By default, having only a fresh installation of Ubuntu 5.10, you cann't listen to mp3, you cann't watch movies on DVD, it takes hours to burn a CD and, by the way, installing bare system in a language other than English requires downloading many megabytes from an interweb. Which takes out your precious time.
Linux sucks, but everything sucks even more (although elsewhere).

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 19:14 UTC (Tue) by ayeomans (guest, #1848) [Link]

EasyUbuntu takes care of most of this. Spread the word.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 20:41 UTC (Tue) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] (3 responses)

"By default, having only a fresh installation of Ubuntu 5.10, you cann't listen to mp3"

Well gee, on all of the fresh installs of windows I have tried, you could not listen to an ogg vorbis file. And to my knowledge, there are no legal reasons stopping it. (They may be contractually obligated to not do so, but that is another issue.)

We are just in a chicken and and egg situation. I am trying to push the situation some by not doing as much free support for non-Free OSes and apps while doing more free support for the Free stuff. (Using free in both senses there.) It is part of the free market at work. (Is that another sense, or one of the first two?)

all the best,

drew
----
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/187924
Bahamian Nonsense

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 21:08 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (2 responses)

Well gee, on all of the fresh installs of windows I have tried, you could not listen to an ogg vorbis file. And to my knowledge, there are no legal reasons stopping it.

Maybe not, but there certainly are market forces in effect, since hardly anyone actually uses ogg vorbis. I'm pretty sure from the context of the article that the author is interested in playing files that he already has.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 17, 2006 21:55 UTC (Wed) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] (1 responses)

> since hardly anyone actually uses ogg vorbis

i Would like to see you prove that comment if you can that is ..

#

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 18, 2006 6:50 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

*hunts in vain for the "ignore user" option*

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 23:19 UTC (Tue) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link]

By default, having only a fresh installation of Ubuntu 5.10, you cann't listen to mp3

Oh really? According to the package description for xmms in Breezy,

It's able to read and play:

   
 * Audio MPEG layer 1, 2, and 3 (with mpg123 plug-in),

...

Also, the list of files includes a file called "usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.so", which would seem to be the plugin mentioned in the description. This package is in main.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 17, 2006 4:39 UTC (Wed) by dirtyepic (guest, #30178) [Link]

Well, it also takes me more than 4 hours to install Windows XP SP2 on my desktop and get it to a point where it's actually usable for me. This includes the install, booting, configuring the network options to the bare minimum needed to "safely" connect to the internet with IE, downloading Firefox and Sygate, installing Sygate, rebooting, configuring Sygate, configuring Firefox, downloading the many many Microsoft Updates available (rebooting multiple times at points in between), downloading and installing drivers for all my hardware (probably a reboot in here too), going through the control panel modules to change the defaults to sane / preferential settings (rebooting to change to a static swap size), downloading and installing various applications and utilities that aren't available out of the box (AV, ad-ware manager, a decent video player (+ codecs), a decent music player, a utility suite to clean up after Windows' crap, a pdf reader, a cd burning app, etc.) and so on and so on.

This is just to get to a point where i can use the computer without wanting to throw it out the window. I'm not counting the hours I'll spend tweaking settings, playing in the registry, and just generally getting things to work "right".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you don't have to put in a similar effort to get things working in Linux. I know for a fact you do (and in the case of my Gentoo systems add another a month or so ;P). But you can't say that Windows is so much better.

Down day on Wall Street?

Posted May 16, 2006 19:10 UTC (Tue) by southey (guest, #9466) [Link]

The piece starts with "I was hesitant to spend $200 on the Windows XP operating system". But at the end of the article we have "In the end, I decided to buy an upgrade copy of Windows XP for $100". Someone lost out on $100...

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 20:02 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (7 responses)

For once, this is an overall balanced and fair evaluation. It does more damage than good to push desktop Linux too hard too soon.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 20:34 UTC (Tue) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link] (5 responses)

I don't know. I have one problem with this article - namely, that it's not really about "how suitable is Linux for the desktop" but rather about "how suitable is Linux for the desktop when you want to migrate from windows or introduce it into a windows environment". That's an important question, too, of course, but a different one.

To illustrate the difference, observe that the author complains about problems with importing Office files into OpenOffice. If that was a strike against Linux on the desktop in general, you could just as well argue that windows is not ready for the desktop because Office does not properly import OpenOffice documents.

So, yes, it does seem to be a balanced and fair evaluation, but not an evalution of whether Linux is ready for the desktop - it's an evaluation of whether Linux can act as a drop-in replacement for windows without the user really noticing anything.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 20:40 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

That's not really a problem, though, because it doesn't ever say otherwise. In fact, the title is "Out the Window". :)

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 16, 2006 22:30 UTC (Tue) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306) [Link]

To illustrate the difference, observe that the author complains about problems with importing Office files into OpenOffice. If that was a strike against Linux on the desktop in general, you could just as well argue that windows is not ready for the desktop because Office does not properly import OpenOffice documents.

This is really an OpenOffice/MS Office problem.

The big difference between Windows and the Linux Distributions are all the applications that comes with your typical distrbution.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 17, 2006 2:53 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

""I don't know. I have one problem with this article - namely, that it's not really about "how suitable is Linux for the desktop" but rather about "how suitable is Linux for the desktop when you want to migrate from windows or introduce it into a windows environment". That's an important question, too, of course, but a different one.""

No it's not.

The reason is is because EVERYBODY uses Windows on the desktop and nobody uses Linux on the desktop. And when I say 'everybody' and 'nobody' I mean 99% of everybody out there that would possibly have any interest what-so-ever in using any operating system on any desktop. And if they do decide to use Linux your going to be dealing with Linux in a Windows world.

It's the user that defines the criteria of a good desktop, not a third party observer...

The guy's requirements were that it works with his computer. That it plays his media files and works with his peripherals. That he would be able to use it to send, receive, read, create and edit information to/from work and associates.

The result is that the Linux desktop almost worked. It almost did everything he wanted to do on it, but that it fell short on all counts.

This is a fairly decent real-world account of a guy with no substantial computer or operating system knowledge making a serious go at using Linux. This is the problems that he delt with.

It's obvious that he liked it otherwise. It's just that it was unusable for him. He said that he would keep his eye on new developments and possibly give a try later on. Also he said that it would be perfectly suitable for a rather large class of end users. (ones that deal with mostly just using the web and email and home office stuff) Which ironicly are generally the ultra-novices. (assuming of course they have somebody that knows how to install the operating system)

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 17, 2006 9:06 UTC (Wed) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

Depends on the context. I'd say 90% or so of the population of earth has not yet used any operating-system on their desktop. (because they ain't got one)

Migrating to Linux is different from simply starting out with Linux, I agree. And I also agree that for many people in the "western" world, migrating to linux will be the fact. The exception being kids. There's on the order of 50 schools using Skulelinux in Norway now, those kids won't have to "migrate" to Linux or Windows, they'll know both and probably be able to make a more "fair" choise.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 27, 2006 17:25 UTC (Sat) by colobikeguy (guest, #38027) [Link]

I agree with drag.

I work as a hack admin in between drafting patents at a small law firm. I consider myself a linux newbie although I have been tinkering with suse (9.2-10.1) for about two years now.

I would not recommend to my law firm to switch over to linux because of the issues the article noted. The end use profile at my firm is paid over 200 dollars an hour to type up applications and are usually under time crunch to get an application out THAT DAY. So, they get very irritated at small things like section breaks in documents, and would blow up at things like formatting changes between when going from MS Office to OpenOffice.

Personally, I prefer linux at home. I can't wait until I get the wireless on my laptop working. It is a very liberating and lovely operating system. My wife doesn't like linux. However, I am weaning her off of windows and getting her using suse 10.1 with gnome. Her and the kids did not like kde.

Any case, it is great that the linux community has now focused on desktop usability.

I would ABSOLUTELY love to be able to walk into the law firm and say without hesitation: if we upgrade to distro xxx on our server and distro xxx on our clients then we would save xxx dollars in IT costs, and be able to view the videos of inventions our clients send us, and work with our docketing system, and etc.

That hasnt happened yet.

Very truly yours,

colobikeguy

PS. We don't do software patents by the way. :) So PLEASE dont flame me.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 17, 2006 13:13 UTC (Wed) by tclark (guest, #32451) [Link]

Of course, now the guy is going to install Windows on that laptop. It's going to take him the better part of a day to install Windows, Office, and other applications and utilities. He may need to futz around a bit to get a driver installed. I hope he writes a follow up article about this.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 17, 2006 9:51 UTC (Wed) by frankie (subscriber, #13593) [Link]

Using GNU/Linux is not a doctor prescription. Honest. If you feel better in a MS Windows environment, do that. I'm personally disturbed and feel castrated in a Windows environment, and use GNU/Linux for my desktop and all my servers since years. But I don't pretend other think the same, of course. We are (still) in a free world.

Out the Window (WSJ)

Posted May 21, 2006 7:28 UTC (Sun) by h2 (guest, #27965) [Link]

I agree that claims that anyone can easily switch from windows are oversold by linux fans.

I know my level of computing ability, programmer, sys admin etc, and there's no way an average user could have gotten their box to the condition I got mine in, sorry.

It's harder. It's harder to keep the desktop stable using debian sid, if longterm desktop life span is a consideration.

This doesn't mean linux on the desktop is bad, it just means it's harder for average users once something does not work. If everything installs and is recognized, it's far easier to setup than windows, but as soon as you hit a real glitch, forget it if you're an average user.

I don't try to misrepresent linux to anyone, I know how long it took me to get to the point where I could start feeling comfortable with it, and I know where average users are in relation to me in terms of computer skills.

I can easily see setting up someone with broadband a second box with linux as a guest pc, that would work flawlessly, but I can't see changing people who work on their pcs to linux easily, mostly due to software issues.

Wine is at best erratic, and is not an option. I have not installed one single application in wine that works flawlessly. Some work quite well, but none are flawless, and I would not recommend wine as a solution to anyone at its current state, although it's a lot better than it used to be.

I really like debian linux, it's what I use, in kanotix distro form, but I don't see this as being ready for average working computer users yet. Casual users. Takes too much skill, guys, give yourselves some credit, I think you forget how much you know about this stuff relative to most people out there.

It just proves Lock In

Posted May 26, 2006 14:23 UTC (Fri) by alext (guest, #7589) [Link]

All this story proves is lock in. The person has years of use invested in Windows. Yet still expects to replace it in days with something they aren't familliar with.

Try using it for years and then try picking up Windows XP to use. It is not pleasant. Yes it feels more polished. However the way it works, how many times do I have to still reboot whilst installing things from applications to drivers.

Why does it continue to return to default settings when I have configured it otherwise. Why does it need me to reinstall the USB driver every time I unplug the device and plug it in again?

The truth is you get used to doing it one way and change is uncomfortable (though I also don't like how many mouse clicks it takes to do things in XP and how much hands from keyboard to mouse I have to do. And many other things, a list I am sure people required to go the opposite way could match).