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Shuttleworth Says Ubuntu Can't Just Be Windows
Posted by
timothy
on Tue May 05, 2009 11:06 AM
from the bsod-screensaver-must-suffice dept.
from the bsod-screensaver-must-suffice dept.
ruphus13 writes "When Mark Shuttleworth was asked what role WINE will play in Ubuntu's success, he said that Ubuntu cannot simply be a better platform to run Windows apps. From the post, according to Shuttleworth, '[Windows and Linux] both play an important role but fundamentally, the free software ecosystem needs to thrive on its own rules. it is *different* to the proprietary software universe. We need to make a success of our own platform on our own terms. if Linux is just another way to run Windows
apps, we can't win. OS/2 tried that ...' The post goes on to say, 'Linux simply isn't Windows (nor is Windows Linux) and to expect fundamentally different approaches (and I'm not just thinking closed versus open) to look, feel, and operate the same way is senseless.'"
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Well, not quite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, Vista and 7 tried to be a $500 way of running Windows apps, while XP was a $100 way of running Windows apps. And compared to XP, Vista also needed $400 worth of hardware.
Depressing proof that it's all in the marketing.
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, Vista and 7 tried to be a $500 way of running Windows apps, while XP was a $100 way of running Windows apps. And compared to XP, Vista also needed $400 worth of hardware.
Depressing proof that it's all in the marketing.
But the $100 option meant you couldn't have "Team OS/2" in your Usenet signature.
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The cost is beside the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a long-time Linux (and much more recently OS X) user, and if I am presented with a piece of software that requires Windows to run it, I usually prefer to just do without.
Fortunately in my discipline (biotech) developers are beginning to realise there are alternatives - for instance, Geneious [geneious.com] is a stupendously fine example. It's definitely not free, but it is available on multiple platforms, which is a big step away from where we were a couple of years ago.
Compare this with Endnote [endnote.com] which is rapidly losing ground to Zotero [zotero.org] because the developers refuse to cooperate with the *nix world.
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Re:The cost is beside the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
Zotero fills that gap on both counts, and works perfectly well with OpenOffice. I'm not interested in starting a flamewar here, since any mention of OOo on
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Bibtex (Score:5, Informative)
That's because you shouldn't be using OpenOffice for academic writing. It's ok, but it's painful if you have to say.. typeset equations.
You should be using LaTeX. If you need a gui, then use LyX, which has, to date, the most efficient and capable equation editor I've seen so far. It's helped, of course, by including a pass-through feature for anything it doesn't understand.
LyX integrates with a few bibtex managers, or flat text files.
And of course, the big advantage is that you don't even bother writing the style file. You just use the standard one from the appropriate body (ams, for instance), or get it from the publisher. You use the markup for what it was intended for: telling the software where the sections are, and what bits of text are the titles for those sections, subsections, etc.
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, Vista and 7 tried to be a $500 way of running Windows apps, while XP was a $100 way of running Windows apps.
And that's why XP is still vastly more popular than Vista.
Or maybe because it isn't bloatware?
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an insightful commentary on the vast bloatiness of Vista that XP can be considered not to be bloatware in comparison.
I can remember testing computers that were marginal on 2000, which became unusable with XP, even after cutting out all the unnecessary crap I could. And these computers ran quite well on NT 4.0. (The testing was part of an attempt to convince management that no, we couldn't continue to use our 8 year old computers.)
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah but how many *brand new* XP machines did you buy that ran like crap? I suspect the answer is "none" because Microsoft's recommendations to hardware manufacturers were realistic (128 meg recommended). Now compare that to Vista:
My brother bought himself a brand-new Vista machine, with 512 meg of RAM, and it's as slow as a snail through molasses. Microsoft gave the hardware manufacturers bad advice when they said 512 meg was enough space.
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Interesting)
When XP was launched on board graphics cards were 16MB at most (more often 4MB). When the manufactures did that they were selling machines which had 92% of the recommended ram. When Manufactures sold Vista machines they were selling them with 60% of the minimum required ram. In modern terms its the equivilent of running XP on 48MB's of ram. Possible but makes the system seem like a bloated piece of rubbish.
I honestly think most of Vista's perception problems were caused by manufacturer's being stingy on their hardware and lazy in writing their drivers.
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Funny)
My 8 year old computer ran xp just fine... celeron 1.1 with 512 ram Vista wants that as a minimum, if that's just for the os how are you going to use it for anything else? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/system-requirements.aspx [microsoft.com]
Best use? comic relief! press the "ON" button, and look at Vista trying to squeeze itself in the RAM. the Funniest half an hour you'll get.
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
Home Basic? Correct me if I'm wrong but that's the version that's Vista without the "Vista"? Most people I know when they talk about Vista never even include the Basic version. $400 MIGHT be what Ultimate goes for, but also isn't what most people think of when they think Vista. I think the amount for Home Premium or Business is closer to $250 which might be more accurate. Far less then $400 but also far more then $100.
I think $250 for full retail of an OS is a bit much, but that's just me.
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think $250 for full retail of an OS is a bit much, but that's just me.
Its all relative.
It does a hell of a lot more than most software. And its a hell of a lot more complicated than most software too. File systems, threading, memory management, security, networking, printing, hardware abstraction...
Yet people drop more than that amount for 'Apple remote desktop' which is SSH, VNC, SCP, and a few tricks. Or check out the price of Acrobat 9, Simply Accounting Premium (with Reports!!!111), or Filemaker Pro 10...
Suddenly retail OSes seems cheap.
It just goes to prove that 'Price' and 'how much it can do / how complicated that stuff is' are completely unrelated.
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Funny)
It's still about $200 more than its worth.
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
I remember only paying $75 for my first version of OS/2 Warp 3.0. Then, a few years later, I was willing to pay up to $119 to upgrade to OS/2 Warp 4.0 to avoid having to use Windows on my home PC the way I was forced to use it at work. I can't remember any of my OS/2 colleagues paying any more than that. Where did you get those pricing figures?
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the history.
If IBM had gotten its shit together and gotten OS/2 out the door in the early 1990s as originally intended, Windows would have been known only as the GUI interface. Windows would have been to OS/2 as Gnome is to Ubuntu: a pretty front end to a powerful and secure operating system.
But OS/2 was crippled by infighting among the divisions of IBM, and was tilting at windmills in its pursuit of true multitasking on the Intel 80286 microprocessor. (One of the best quotes ever from Bill Gates was when he described the 286 as being "brain dead"). While IBM got itself all tangled up trying to do something never done before-- true pre-emptive multitasking on a microchip with all the appropriate security that would need-- Microsoft took advantage of an escape clause in its contract to develop Windows for IBM, and tied this GUI front-end on top of DOS, which could not do multitasking and had no security model at all. Micorsoft also jumped over the 286 and developed for the 80386 microprocessor (then backfilled to provide some limited capabilities on the 80286). Thus Win3.0 came on the scene, complete with "cooperative multitasking"-- which meant no true multitasking at all.
If OS/2 had been released even as late as 1992, Microsoft would have been unable to compete with its technical superiority. We would have OS/2 and not Windows. A lot of things would have happened very differently... the delay in OS/2 was a significant historical cusp.
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Ubuntu should be MORE than windows (Score:5, Insightful)
If Ubuntu were a $0 way of running windows applications it would take over the world.
Ubuntu shouldn't be *just* windows, it should be windows and more. The problem is that the "and more" part Ubuntu already does perfectly but the "just windows" part is still not complete.
If wine could run every relevant windows applications, people could forget the applications and concentrate on what the system itself does.
Linux is so much better, so much more powerful, easier to use, secure, and stable than windows it's a shame so many people are turned off Linux because their work requires exactly this or that application.
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Re:Ubuntu should be MORE than windows (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from running Photoshop and Quicken, it does everything a computer should do, perfectly. I run work and entertainment applications. Play movies, browse the web, play music, invert matrixes, find eigenvalues, do fourier transforms, administer databases, etc.
And what I don't need to do: no need to run virus scan, no need to defrag disks, no need to buy memory upgrades, no need to buy software, no need to run regedit, etc.
What windows can do but is much easier in Linux: run a web server, run a mail server, run a file server, run *any* server.
No hassle, no regedit, no googling forum after forum looking for answers, no downloading drivers, no reformatting, no reinstalling. The "and more" that Linux does perfectly now is what a computer should do, it runs year after year without any intervention. I have a Linux server running without *any* input at all since 1992. It does its simple task exactly as it was meant to.
On the desktop side, the "and more" means I can configure my desktop and icons in the way I prefer without any problem, I just select whatever I want without having to worry about "security". The system is secure because it was designed that way, I don't need to buy or download anything. I can configure the way the desktop works. I can select between several different desktop managers. High performance (KDE), easy to configure (Gnome), low hardware requirements (IceWM), you name it.
And, if something doesn't work the way it should, I have no need to reformat and reinstall, download newer drivers, repeat, ad infinitum. With Linux there's always one more resource, google the problem and you'll find a forum somewhere with the answer, even if it means you'll have to recompile something. It's better to recompile than to fall back to reformat and reinstall...
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Re:Well, not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
I never paid anywhere near $500 for OS/2.
I could be misremembering -- it's been so long -- but $99 for upgrades is what I recall. Once I paid full price for a standard edition because for some fool reason I didn't want to wait a month for the upgrade, but I'm pretty sure even that wasn't anywhere near $500
I got OS/2 Warp 3.0 for about $60-80 soon after it came out. I also got a full legal Vista Home Premium for $109. The GP was just making up numbers.
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But running windows would help (Score:5, Insightful)
With me...there are some windows applications I have to use (Quickbooks pro for my company I contract through), and on jobsites often there are tools they have that are only windows based.
I find when I have to use those windows boxes on site, I often really, really miss having my unix tools (sed, awk, etc...) around. If I could have my linux install, and have the hard core tools to use, and be able to also run windows apps when I needed to, I'd be happy to go.
That need, obviously isn't one Joe User needs, but, maybe it would work the other way around with JU. He has his windows apps, and over time, discovers the neat tools and functionality that Linux offers. Frankly, as long as he has his apps he needs from windows, he doesn't care what the OS is.
Re:But running windows would help (Score:5, Informative)
I find when I have to use those windows boxes on site, I often really, really miss having my unix tools (sed, awk, etc...) around.
1) Install Cygwin [cygwin.com].
2) Add the Cygwin bin directory to your path.
3) Enjoy - The Command Prompt just got a helluva lot more useful.
Wasted 3 mod points that I'd contributed before posting, but felt the need to share the joy of Cygwin. Makes Windows damned near tolerable for people that have to have it.
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Re:But running windows would help (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I use Cygwin...or more precisely CygwinX [cygwin.com] ...basically cygwin, with xwindows thrown in. I fire up cygwin. Start X from that...and open up a bunch of xterm windows. Works pretty well...
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Re:But running windows would help (Score:4, Insightful)
Wine is getting there, but it's not there yet. Emulation might work, but then it needs to be seamless. Until Ubuntu can beard the dragon in its own lair, it will be fighting the overwhelming advantage of incumbent software Windows has rather than making it work for it.
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Re:But running windows would help (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never bearded a dragon, that sounds difficult. What if the dragon hasn't gone through puberty yet? :-o
Joking aside, I disagree. Linux needs to be good (and easy, if you want the same market share and same market demographic) at the SAME THINGS, but not necessarily the SAME PROGRAMS. There's a vast difference.
Now, being able to go between the two - including file formats - is important. But I don't need to run, say, MS Office on Linux. I do use OpenOffice 3 and it works well (except for Impress, last time I tried using it). And going between MS and OO.org isn't a problem, for the most part.
Firefox, chatting (I even used Pidgin on Windows), etc.
Where I see Ubuntu (8.10 and just upgraded to 9.04) right now is multimedia. Video playback isn't all that great, Flash video full screen is jerky (not related to sound) ... (I know, video drivers [ATI], but you're not going to convince the average person that Linux IS better, it's ATI that's the problem...). Sound can sometimes get tied up between applications. PulseAudio is not very standard yet and doesn't work with all apps. Songbird is an OK itunes replacement but it's not as good. Amarok 2 doesn't play well with Gnome/ALSA/Pulse as far as it running and other sound-enabled apps running.
I think the Linux community needs to focus more on being able to do the basic stuff easily and well, and forget trying to run Quake 3 or Far Cry or Half-Life 2 [or whatever] with a higher FPS than native in Windows.
(and by the way, lest anyone think I'm just an Ubuntu guy and not a Linux guy, I used opensuse and only recently switched to ubuntu [after trying a variety of other ones, including Mint, Mandriva, etc) at home, and redhat/SLES[/hpux/solaris/aix] at work)
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Re:But running windows would help (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, Wine is not "getting there" at all. If the Windows API specs were open, it would be a different matter. As it stands, the specs are closed, and Microsoft is as willing as usual to spoil any attempts to make things compatible. Would it not be easier to rewrite core apps from scratch? Office, Photoshop, Exchange. What else do you guys need? No one really cares about games. If Windows remains the primary game platform, no big loss. We have plenty of other proprietary game platforms, and it seems to be the natural way. Can we finally have a productivity platform running free software, though?
We already have OpenOffice, which is comparable to MS Office in both feature set and performance. While it may be wise at the time for most people to delay the transition, those who say that MS Office is better for anything are insane. Today, those who build a solution from scratch and are not tied to DOC format will automatically choose OO. Here we won already.
Gimp is not Photoshop, but it would be a Photoshop Jr. if only we added more color depth. That seems to be easier to do than to make Wine work.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but Exchange server is a database with a web interface. Don't we have all the components already? Compared to the Wine project goals, it would be almost trivial to throw some stuff together to make a feature-equivalent app.
I greatly respect the effort that went into Wine, but it seems like we could do better by simply filling the few remaining gaps in the desktop application world. Wine offers quickly diminishing returns because MS will never publish (let alone free) the code and will never stop intentionally breaking compatibility. Aside from very simple cases, Wine will never be used for OS transition, as that would require 100% compatibility, which is impossible to achieve.
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Re:But running windows would help (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. That's exactly what Shuttleworth is saying. If linux can run windows programs, then traditional windows programmers have no reason to try to develop natively for the platform. This is one thing that ended up killing OS/2. But Linux, luckily, cannot be killed in this way thanks to the community of open source developers around it. OS/2 didn't have that advantage, so died when nobody wrote native apps for it. Not to discredit the WINE developers for the work they have done, but native apps are the better approach here.
Shuttleworth has it right. We don't want to be another way to run windows programs. We need to be our own environment, and not ape things just for the sake of doing it the same, tired, broken way. I am happy to see that many of the wonderful things from OS/2's WPS are slowly making their way into the linux environments. There's still a way to go, but it's already better in many ways than the windows UI 'experience'.
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New record for least content in an article? (Score:5, Insightful)
So this news story is fluff spun out of two lines of IRC chat?
Re:New record for least content in an article? (Score:5, Informative)
TFStory
(12:24:03 PM) jcastro: jcastro: QUESTION: Do you see Wine (and Windows-compatibilty in general) or native Linux ports as the more important ingredient in the success of Ubuntu, or do they each play an important role?
(12:24:18 PM) sabdfl: they both play an important role
(12:24:30 PM) sabdfl: but fundamentally, the free software ecosystem needs to thrive on its own rules
(12:24:41 PM) sabdfl: it is *different* to the proprietary software universe
(12:24:54 PM) sabdfl: we need to make a success of our own platform on our own terms
(12:25:08 PM) sabdfl: if Linux is just another way to run Windows apps, we can't win
(12:25:13 PM) sabdfl: OS/2 tried that
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In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not going to try and base our business model on WINE.
Much better to have native apps.
But They Need a Story! (Score:5, Funny)
Reporter A: So
Shuttleworth: Ok, for the last time, I am going to go over this very very slowly.
*Shuttleworth writes Ubuntu and Windows on the chalkboard and puts a massive "does not equal" sign in between them.*
Shuttleworth: Ubuntu cannot and will not ever "be" Windows. I've been over this for the past two hours, can we move away from Windows/Ubuntu comparisons here?
Reporter B: But you want to be a widely used operating system?
Shuttleworth: That is correct.
Reporter B: And Windows is the most widely user operating system?
Shuttleworth: Also correct.
Reporter B:
*Shuttleworth lets out a long drawn-out sigh, massages his forehead and takes a drink from his glass of water*
Shuttleworth: *holds up two pieces of fruit* In my left hand I hold an apple. In my right hand I hold an orange. Although both are round, the two taste different and have different colors and subtle shapes
Reporter C: Hold on, an "Apple"? I'm not following you, are you saying you're trying to "be" OS X?
Shuttleworth: This press conference is over!
WINE is irrelevant... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bravo (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubuntu cannot simply be a better platform to run Windows apps.
Exactly right. Morphing Linux into a Windows software platform would be a major mistake. You'd still be locking users into one way of doing things. I'm sitting here looking at our developers, all working on Linux. One uses pico, one a text editor another uses Eclipse. We all work differently, even different distros, and all manage to get our work done.
In a Windows shop we were all using the same OS, the same development environment and the same tools. Everything was regimented into MSFT's way of doing things and limited by the latitude they decide you get. Their tools, their rules, their training, their way. And it seemed we were always dancing on their string over something. Licensing, product activation, version compatibility issues, so we'd get paid to rewrite working applications for new frameworks, security patches that break things, the upgrade treadmill. Hours of undocumented time pouring through knowledge base articles. It was a constant waterfall of nit-picky little things that we would have to bend our schedule, manage our time to accommodate. The bonus was you always looked stressed out and busy and it was job security. Without regular maintenance, apps would stop working. You have no idea how much time you spend digging sand in a MSFT environment until you move off it.
I think it's nice that Wine exists for those odd times you need to run a Windows app. But that should never be the OS focus. And in the bigger picture of proprietary v free, as long as MSFT dictates your application environment, you're still dancing on their string.
users don't figure out how to install apps (Score:5, Informative)
I've gotten several people in my family started with Ubuntu, and one weird thing I've observed is that none of them ever seem to spontaneously figure out how to install applications -- they don't even seem to realize that the open-source apps are out there, or that it might be desirable to install them.
Okay, maybe this is a good thing, because maybe it just means that a default Ubuntu does a very good job of including enough apps that the average user can do everything they need to do. Or maybe it just means that most people, unlike me, don't enjoy playing with software.
But it really does make me wonder whether the Linux community could be doing a better job of selling itself based on the availability of a huge number of free, high-quality applications. Apt-cache stats says that I have 25,000 packages installed on my desktop machine at home, all of them free. If even 1% of those cost $10 each, we'd be talking about a massive investment in order to build up a similar software library using proprietary software.
Now it might seem obvious to linux geeks that you should say, "I want to do x, therefore I search on freshmeat for an app that does x, and then I install it." But most people don't even think that way about computer software. They're in the habit of buying it in a store, or on amazon, and they expect it to cost money. Synaptic doesn't exactly advertise itself very well, either. Users seem to putter around for years in Gnome without ever noticing that there's a utility built into the menus that would allow them to download a ton of free software.
Re:users don't figure out how to install apps (Score:5, Interesting)
I completely agree. Synaptic and the whole "Add/Remove Software..." (I think that's what Ubuntu calls it) thing are fundamentally different ways of obtaining software than what people are used to with Windows or Mac. I told someone today that I had only paid for one (non-game) piece of software in my life, and they thought I meant I was a huge pirate or something. "Download" has become synonymous with "illegal" for most people and telling folks they can just download whatever software they want for free is going to require some serious de-indoctrination.
When that lightbulb goes off in someone's head that they can download any of the software in that big list for free, legally, and easily, and then that it (generally) just works... it's a beautiful thing. That's when I think people start to realize how awesome OSS can be.
Parent
Re:users don't figure out how to install apps (Score:5, Interesting)
We casual computer users will use the applications we find unless they don't do what we want.
I never wanted to learn computer science, I wanted to use a word processor instead of a typewriter back in 1990 when I got my first PC. I used WordPerfect-5.1, had to learn DOS memory management to get WP to run in (faster) expanded memory mode. Note I said "had to" not "wanted to." I even wrote macros to make editing docs more rational than WP's infamous interface.
When Windows 95 came out, DOS was obviously deprecated, and I got on the upgrade treadmill, installing WP-6.0a for WIndows. Alas, my macros wouldn't work. Also I hated Windows' registry. I could still run WP-5.1 under DOS, but W95 kept crashing under it.
I tried Linux in 1997. Got SuSE 5.0 installed and it was ugly. Tried again in 1998 when WP ported version 8 to Linux. My distro was Caldera 1.3; I liked KDE, which seemed more advanced than W95 to me, and ran WP-5.1 under DOSemu. I moved to Red Hat 6.0, which I used for six years, learning to update and upgrade with RPM and by compiling. By then, I needed a newsgroup client; Pan was just coming into existence, and I volunteered to build RPMs for that project while using NX under Wine as Pan was still unstable as all hell.
Now I use an Ubuntu variant and run WP-5,1 under QEMU. Pan is now useful, so I quit using FA; VLC, Dragon Player, Gnome viewer and Digikam have replaced Irfanview under WINE for me. Ytree has replaced Xtree Gold. Sylpheed mail replaced Forte Free Agent under Wine.
I found Linux programs I needed on the internet, gradually, over time, the same way I found Windows apps.
As I said, I never *wanted* to learn CS. But I have, I have.
And doubtless many other unwilling CS hobbyists will do the same, find Adept or Synaptic and explore it, or find mention of an app on the internet and try to install it.
Shuttleworth is quite right, but after almost twenty years, I have NOT replaced WP-5.1 with emacs or the like; I most profoundly do NOT want to learn another macro language. WP-5.1 serves me very, very well still, thanks to Freedos http://www.freedos.org/ [freedos.org] Ultimate Ubuntu and QEMU.
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Re:users don't figure out how to install apps (Score:5, Insightful)
As I said, I never *wanted* to learn CS. But I have, I have.
With due respect, you learned IT and not CS - not that the former is anything to sneeze at.
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Freedom. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubuntu won't "just be windows" because it is free (NOT as in beer). The more I use my 360 and PS3 to try to play media from my PC the more I understand how bad the protected DRM-everything model is for consumers. That's the future of Windows, guys. People are not going to put up with their hardware refusing to do what should easily be able to do as long as there is an alternative that will do everything else too. Convenience is king, and DRM is becoming increasingly restrictive and annoying.
Re:Freedom. (Score:5, Informative)
DRM is a series of restrictions that are there to prevent people from stealing (media) intellectual property.
The GPL is a series of restrictions that are there to prevent people from stealing (source code) intellectual property.
This is only a superficial similarity emphasized by your borderline-incorrect choice of wording. Any closer examination reveals that DRM and GPL are serving opposite ends using opposite means.
DRM is a technical framework that prevents you from doing things that are legal, and often does so in an unfriendly way. If it weren't for the DRM applied to a certain piece of media content you receive, you could do more with it.
GPL is a legal framework that allows you to do things that are otherwise illegal. If it weren't for GPL applied to a certain piece of software you receive, you could do less with it (due to copyright law). There are certainly copyright licenses which give you greater permissions than the GPL does, but using the GPL is still an act of freedom compared to the default of no license.
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Its all about the service (Score:4, Interesting)
To me the difference between purchasing Windows and choosing to go open source can be compared to the difference between getting a Dell desktop or going to Newegg and making your own.
Sure you can save a lot of money at newegg and make a powerful machine. You need to assemble it yourself (which for myself was much fun). Service wise its only adequate. I had a DVD burner break down, it was still under warranty I consulted my return policy, did what I had to do and had a new DVD burner back in my machine in a week.
But with Dell. You pay much more for a really good rig. You dont have to assemble it (and while assembly is fun - it can be a hassle). Service wise, as someone who works in the industry - Dell is fantastic. With the right warranty they will send a local technician straight to your office to repair anything. Peace of mind can be bought. You can have a warranty so good you can toss your insanely expensive laptop out a window for kicks and have it replaced shortly.
As long as there are people in the world who cant handle the extra hassle of servicing open source - there will be a market for Windows. But given the direction the world economy is taking that could change fairly soon (in my lifetime anyways). Right now whoever provides the best service wins. And in an environment like Open Source. Its hard (not impossible) to guarantee top notch service. Sad but true.
Re:Ubuntu is not up to scratch (Score:5, Interesting)
I like it much better.
On windows I can't set up my own dns forwarding proxy with a few simple commands, or add a powerful compiler or set of scripting language interpreters and libraries with equal ease.
Ubuntu is great for me. I don't give a crap about running windows apps.
Time to eat your own ass.
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Re:Ubuntu is not up to scratch (Score:5, Funny)
Now I'm probably just being a dumbass, but I'm a reasonably technical dumbass. Even reasonably non-technical dumbasses could do such a thing in windows.
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Re:Ubuntu is not up to scratch (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-set-a-static-ip-address-in-ubuntu-810-intrepid-ibex.html
Keep in mind that the 8.10 release is not designed for broad use and that most users (even now that 9.04 has been released) should still be using 8.04, the last stable LTS release.
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Re:Ubuntu is not up to scratch (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind that the 8.10 release is not designed for broad use and that most users (even now that 9.04 has been released) should still be using 8.04, the last stable LTS release.
Untrue.
While there is no long term support (LTS) for anything since 8.04, but for those of us who don't need it, that isn't a concern. There is 18 months of support for every Ubuntu release. That is plenty long enough for most uses.
If I were designing a process that required multi-year support and maintenance, then I'd certainly think about LTS, but that isn't the world I work in.
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Re:Ubuntu is not up to scratch (Score:5, Interesting)
And with Windows it's Right-click on 'My Network Places' -> Properties. Then pick the connection ->Properties. Pick the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option ->Properties. All mouse-driven, all GUI, all easy. Adjust away.
That's the difference. With Ubuntu|Linux, you've got to *know* how to get to the Terminal, then you've got to type stuff, then you've got to edit config files. Then restart things. Then something else breaks, which requires not the usual 'Add/Remove' program function to fix it, but a trip into 'sudo aptitude blah-blah-blah'. Then maybe that works, maybe it doesn't. Of course, it's trivially easy to find umpteen tutorials on *how* to do this stuff. Linux-lovers get excited over that. And that's totally cool. And I'll buy the argument that it is "better" to actually learn how your O/S works. But casual users, mainstream users, money-spending users, no way. They just want it to work.
I have three notebooks; one running Vista, one running Ubuntu 9.04, and a Macbook. I use them interchangeably, depending on what I'm doing. Ubuntu 9.04 is the best release of Ubuntu yet, but it's still kludgy compared to Vista or Mac. And when things break in Ubuntu (like when my WiFi simply stopped working after a recommended update & reboot) it required quite a bit of troubleshooting and 'tinkering' to get it working again. After a half-hour, I was back in business. But it required a half-hour of work to fix. Enjoyable fun for the computer nerd. But not for Grandma. People want apps that are easily installed, easily removed, and consistent in their method of installation.
And until some Linux distro figures that out (Ubuntu 9.04 is *damn* close) they'll never capture enough market share to hit critical mass. Based on the improvements I've witnessed from Ubuntu 6.xxx through today's 9.04, they may be there by Ubuntu 10 or 11. Here's to hoping. :-)
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Re:Ubuntu is not up to scratch (Score:5, Insightful)
With your Windows example, you demonstrated that it is easy, if you already know how to do it. There isn't anything particularly intuitive about it. Grandma wouldn't be able to do this.
I'm not trying to flame; it is just that the out of the box intuitiveness of Windows is tremendously overstated.
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Re:Ubuntu is not up to scratch (Score:4, Interesting)
"Even reasonably non-technical dumbasses could do such a thing in windows."
No they can't.
But this does not solve your problem. How have you tried to do it? Perhaps we can help.
Every single person in my dorm in college in 1998 was able to figure this out on their first day with no help from the school. They were all using Windows or Mac OS Whatever Was out Then. I can't comment on the difficulty of setting up a static IP in Ubuntu, but in windows and MacOS, even 10.5 years ago it was trivial for even first time computer owners.
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Re:Have YOU ever downloaded it and used it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I had quite the opposite experience.
I have given up on Linux for the desktop completely.
It never just works. I have been waiting since 1999 and even switched to FreeBSD for a couple of years. I spent hours twinking the FreeBSD ports or Gentoo portage and it almost works or some bugs happen like an issue of bleeding high volume without hte volume control and a kill -9 will kill only the gui part of the application and my speakers get blown out because the sound system is still blasting, etc.
Anyway Ubuntu sort of worked on my laptop. Then all of the sudden during an apt-get upgrade my hardware became unsupported.
To this day Ubuntu will not run on any non intel AMD chipset. They refuse to provide drivers and the instructions to enable them require a cvs to madwifi which I could do if I had internet access in the first place which I lost. I do not know if Ubuntu is trying to take a stance on principles of supporting proprietary drivers but as a user I do not care. All I know is it used to work and now I have Ethernet, 3d video, or wifi.
And please do not give me the lecture that I should have checked my hardware. I am on a strict budget in this economy and do not have time to check every component in every chipset to find a laptop under $750 to see how stable the Linux drivers are. The intel ones had crappy video or were too expensive.
I had nothing but problems and I use MS Office which is a superior to openoffice. My computers just work with Windows with zero hassles.
Linux is great in the computer room where it does not have to pretend to be the operating system for everyone like Windows tries to be. Windows is now stable for desktop usage and comes with the computer anyway. Unless your a php or Unix developer why switch? Only servers need six sigma %99.97 uptime or better and Windows server 2008 is getting close to this.
Do not get me wrong I think its a great operating system. But I have noticed hardware compatibility has gone down rather than up in recent years due to wifi and users switching from standard desktops to proprietary laptops.
This is what Linux truly needs. Alot of anti Microsoft users are switching to Macs which ends up hurting Linux on anything but servers.
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Re:I think he's wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
If your going to be using windows apps anyway, what do you have to gain by migrating?
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Actually (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a proper time to push WINE compatibility with Ubuntu -- after a few major industry players, as you describe, put out an Ubuntu version of their software.
The key is to get a user's most important apps running natively, so that there's an incentive to switch. Then you add the compatibility layer for their other miscellaneous apps to take away the disincentive to switch.
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