OS Combat - Ubuntu Linux Versus Vista

An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek pits Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista in a detailed comparison. They run down a number of points for this comparison, including installation, hardware support, software, and backup. For IW, backup was a crucial feature. As a result, the conclusion are unusual for this type of review because it straddles the fence. The verdict is: 'a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary.'"

Obligatory

[by Anonymous Coward]

The obligatory link to the ad free, one page print version. [informationweek.com]

Re:Obligatory

[VisceralLogic (911294)]

Here's another comparison between Ubuntu and Vista for you guys: http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/04/ubuntu-vs-vista .html [bbspot.com] :)

Same old trap

[by Anonymous Coward]

The reviewer constantly falls into the same old trap of basing their comments of Ubuntu on how "Windows like" the particular feature is. At that point it's pretty obvious that Windows itself will always win if you're going to use it as the yard stick to measure all others. This isn't a review of both OSes, it's a comparison of Ubuntu to Vista. Take the conclusion for "Software Installation" as an example:

It's a tie. Both operating systems show much the same centralization and efficiency in dealing with applications, protocols, and programs.

Come again? Vista has nothing like the Ubuntu software repository. Just because the two look a little similar in the screen shots doesn't make them the same.

Ho hum. It tries to be balanced, bless it, but its clear the reviewer is just going to go back to using Windows once it's all done. It fails it.

Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now?

[jimicus (737525)]

Before we get a bunch of people chiming in to say "but XXXXX is easy in ubuntu, you just open a terminal and type..."

I KNOW.

But the audience this is intended for has no intention of using a terminal. Broadly speaking, they are of the opinion that desktop computing should be easy enough that any idiot can do it without having to spend ages learning the nuances of some command you type in.

They are of this opinion thanks to 20 years of GUI R&D in home computing, from the earliest Apple ][ right the way up to Vista today. That's the whole point of the GUI. You don't have to like it, but at least accept that a lot of people do.

As soon as you say "Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get (package)", you've lost.

Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now?

[vivaoporto (1064484)]

As soon as you say "Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get (package)", you've lost.

People usually suggests apt-get because it is faster to describe, but there is nothing you can do with apt-get that you cannot do with Synaptics using only GUI and point and click. Only that its description would be "Click on System->Administration->Synaptics Package Manager. Type your password. Click OK. Click on search and type <name of package>. Press OK. Click on the little square next to <name of package> and mark it. Click Apply. Click OK." That's way harder than "click on Applications->Accessories->Terminal. type 'sudo apt-get install <name of package>' without the quotes. Press Enter. type your password. press Y. Press Enter"

Anyway, the kind of people that would need this amount of details is the same people (and I telling that by personal experience, I performed help desk duties on my former programming job) that would need instructions like this, to install a typical setup.exe: "Open the Windows Explorer. No, not the Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer. Click on Start, Programs, Windows Explorer. Can't find it? Press the key with Windows Logo and "E" simulaneously. GO to C:\Program Files\<My Company Name>. How? Click on the little cross next to the folder called C:. Then click Program Files. Tell it to show the content of this folder anyway. Click on <My Company Name>. Double click setup.exe. Click on Next, select I Agree and click Next, Next, Next, Finish"

It took quite a time for the average people to get used to the Next->I Agree->Next->Next->Next->Finish kind of installation, and now it is muscular memory, a simply reflex on most Windows users memory. They don't even read the fine print anymore, and that explains how a lot of people got/get spyware installed along with Kazaa and alike (die Bonzy Buddy, die!). Given enough time, new migrated ubuntu users will get used to synaptics, and "Add and Remove Programs" (that is even easier than Synaptics) and, if the right wind blows, even eventually opening the terminal and making things much easier for them (and for us poor technical people too).

Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now?

[Trelane (16124)]

it is impossible to get it to do what you want without some serious tweaking, and that usually requires you to either type something in a terminal or edit a file.

I humbly disagree.

You can edit files if you want, but you dont' usually have to. The Windows equivalent is editing the registry. What, you've never had to tweak some obscure registry setting to make things work 100%?!

It's not the fact that my grandma can use it, it's the fact that my grandma can *install* and use it that's important to me (or at least that I can guide her through the phone). Linux cannot yet do that effectively.

So, your grandmother cannot install Linux. Not news. But she can install Windows?! Or does she just use what she gets with her PC and what is provided her by her techie granddaughter? I would suspect the latter rather than the former.

it's hell getting things to work in Linux.

How many notebooks have you installed retail Windows on? It's not a valid to compare OEM-customized Windows to vanilla Linux.

Want the widescreen resolution? Wireless? Sound? Video card? USB? Firewire? That printer? At least a few of those would require me to tweak the system to make things work, if at all.

Funny that, it works 100% with me out of the box for the last three releases of Ubuntu (well, I had to use the GUI printer manager to make the printer work, because it's a networked printer and so ubuntu can't just detect it as it would the dwl-g650 or other attached device). Maybe you're still stuck in 1993?

The system should never mess up to the point that I will have to open terminal and do something.

I totally agree with this statement and would add that no system should ever mess up to the point where you have to boot into safe mode or tweak registry keys. Unfortunately, stuff does screw up and you do have to fix it, be it commandline or obscure registry keys.

The moment that happens, it just isn't really user-friendly.

Indeed, Windows is not ready for the desktop!

Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now?

[drinkypoo (153816)]

I do not use desktops and own only notebooks - it's hell getting things to work in Linux. Want the widescreen resolution? Wireless? Sound? Video card? USB? Firewire? That printer? At least a few of those would require me to tweak the system to make things work, if at all. At that point, I give up. It's not because I cannot but because I do not want to.

I'm horribly tired of this argument, which is made from a position of ignorance.

When you buy a PC with Windows on it, you're buying something that's certified Windows compatible.

If you want all that shit to work with Linux, you're either going to buy something that's certified Linux compatible, or you're going to have to take your chances.

If you bought your next machine with Linux in mind, everything would just work.

In most cases, everything just works anyway. This is much more true today than say a year ago; wireless support has come amazingly far.

In the case of Ubuntu Feisty, it even comes with ndiswrapper.

But regardless, I've had PLENTY of problems supporting older hardware with Windows. In fact I've got a known good 3com PCMCIA modem, I tested it under windows XP and it worked fine, but for some reason the older Windows 98 drivers aren't working (yes, on a Windows 98 system.) Linux is not unique in this regard.

(While Ubuntu++ Vista)

[VE3OGG (1034632)]

Frankly, I don't understand what the problem here is: I pop in an Ubuntu CD, hit yes, yes, yeah, sure, why not, and bam! A Working desktop. Not only that, but I can use the LiveCD for web browsing or what have you while the install is going. No dice for Vista (AFAIK).

Ubuntu recognizes all of my hardware at boot (and I have some rather odd hardware on top of it). No hunting down drivers from a now defunct company, or having to sell my sou^H^H^H^H^H^H^H register to a website that says they have the driver, only to find out they were lying.

Linux has all the security of Vista, minus the UAC.

Ubuntu may not have user-friendly backup out of the box (I wouldn't know, I use ssh+rsync), but the repositories for it have a plethora of options that are free.

And if you are in it for teh shiney!!1!!!!111oneoneone, then Ubuntu can cater (at least on a basic level) with its desktop effects. On top of that, you get immediate (or as near as can be) security updates, and even better a method to upgrade (quite flawlessly, from my experience) to the next version.

Oh yeah, ummm, Ubuntu = free (as in beer, choice, and ideology), Windows = $$$+DRM.

So, why the fence sitting?

That is not the correct conclusion

[schabot (941087)]

The verdict is: 'a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary.'"

This is only the conclusion for the backup portion of the review. I looks like the submitter didn't make it to the last page. The actual conclusion?:

Ubuntu's best strength is handling the ordinary task-based day-to-day stuff. Vista has a level of completeness and polish that some people find it hard to do without.

Headline sounded more interesting than article

[Billosaur (927319)]

I half expected to see the Ubuntu and Vista development teams engaged in some sort of firefight -- blood, gore, explosions, and the like. Imagine my disappointment.

Commenters so far are missing the point

[Jim Morash (20750)]

A tie! This is a big frickin' deal, people! Remember "Linux will never work on the desktop"? And now quasi-mainstream press says it's just as good as Windows Vista?

The Ubuntu team should be very proud.

Aero vs. Beryl, Similar?

[mhall119 (1035984)]

I was tempted to compare Vista's Aero interface to the Beryl window manager (which has a similar palette of visual effects)

If the author means that Beryl has all the same effects that Aero does, then I'd agree. But if he's implying that Aero has all the visual effects that Beryl has, he's lost his f-ing mind.

Sweet!

[sootman (158191)]

Now we can finally settle this which-OS-is-better debate once and for all!

unhelpful linux geeks

[amyhughes (569088)]

A swap of a SATA cable and my Win XP machine becomes an Ubuntu 6.10 machine. I need to be able to support Linux but don't need it very often.

I was shocked that my network connection Just Worked on first install. But my screen was at the wrong resolution, and I had no 3d acceleration. Time to install nVidia drivers.

A day later, now with experience with run modes and editing config files, I had nVidia drivers installed and my 3d app worked fine. It turned out to be simple, but there are an overwhelming number of bad-advice posts to be found on googling for help. This is A Big Problem.

Google a windows problem and you'll find some easy-to-understand magazine editor to explain it, or something on Microsoft's site. Google a linux problem and you get geek-speak. And most of it is bad advice. Usually the bad advice...

"edit the conflabulating confic spec generator and type '@*$&T IU H@U HR@&*&@BFG @&(G' at the third prompt"

is answered with

"No, don't do that! You'll gaspulate the modulating interferometerizing reverse vectral sync mode!"

so you avoid those. Eventually you end up typing '@*$&T IU *^HC* HR@&*&@BFG @&(G' at the *fourth* prompt, because nobody had a heart attack over that suggestion. But then your modulating interferometerizing reverse vectral sync mode is fubar, anyway.

Anyway, I eventually found a suggestion that looked more elegant than the rest and didn't involve editing any conflabulating confic spec generators, wiped to drive and started from scratch, and the nVidia drivers Just Worked.

If I had the power to Make It So, I'd purge 90% of the online linux discussion, because most of it is crap.

Less is more

[goombah99 (560566)]

Your right. it's not the feature count that matters. It's little things like does it have Bash (or for me Perl) that are disprortionately large factors. On the other hand, I'd be kidding my self if I thought there were a lot of perl and bash users out there. it's spit in the ocean of devil spawned end users.

Linux shoul dnot try to play microsoft's game of putting up feature charts and trying to claim them all. What matters to the user is how good a tool it ends up being and that things like consistency of use, intuitiveness and in fact hiding stuff from the user that they don't need to know about.

Windows does a better job than Linux at seemlessness. That is you can configure a lot more things in the gui, and expect them to actually work, before you have to open the hood an dive into the scarey bits. On the other hand things like KDE and GNome, do expose a lot more raw power in a very accessible gui way than windows. For a certain class of user, windows just dumbs things down too much.

For me the sweet spot between power and seemlessness and data hiding is Mac OSX. My mom, who really can't operate a 3 button mouse, is able to use it. Yet Me a power user loves it too. I have hundreds of linux machines yet my desktop machine is nearly always mac osx.

Re:There's nothing to compare

[metlin (258108)]

All the so-called solutions aren't good since it's not OS-Based solutions!.

Excuse me? Cygwin may not be, but Monad is an OS shell. In fact, if you are admin, you can pretty much do anything on Monad. Hell, it even has pipes like on *nix. Perhaps you should try it first, before passing judgement.

Re:There's nothing to compare

[fineghal (989689)]

Has anyone ever actually used Add/Remove programs to, you know, ADD a program?

Re:There's nothing to compare

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

I stopped reading after this. Anyone who thinks Ubuntu's package management 'compares favourably' to add/remove programs is not in his senses.

While Ubuntu's package management is technically much, much, much better than that on Windows since it includes application discovery and acquisition and updates, it is in some practical, workflows inferior. No matter how large your software repository is, there will always be binaries distributed via a Website or on CD or via some other mechanism. On Windows this means you do discovery, acquisition, and updates by hand, the same as every other program. On Linux it means you have a special case where you do all those by hand as well as installation and uninstallation by hand. This means users have to juggle two techniques and remember which applies to which software. This is an area where Linux in general could improve. Package managers are built around the concept of open source software and thus everything you need can be in a repository. When software is not in a repository, it is not handled well and I don't know any package manager for Linux that supports using a software package from some random Website, and managing the install, registration, and updates for that application through the standard package manager. Hopefully this deficiency can be addressed if linux ever gains serious market share on the desktop.

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[Knuckles (8964)]

Add remove programs in Vista and the package manager Ubuntu work in simila ways

Not even that. I mean, in Ubuntu I can install applications with it, in Windows I just can uninstall them. I think I find Ubuntu's solution much more useful then :)

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[PitaBred (632671)]

So, when I click on "Add New Programs", it comes up with a list of thousands of programs that I could install? No, you say? I know you were refuting the GPP's point, because you technically can add a program through there, but you almost never do in practice. All programs have their own installers. The Ubuntu package manager takes care of finding the program you want, getting it and installing it. Windows will just install whatever disk or install.exe file you point it at. There is no comparison.

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[HoosierPeschke (887362)]

I agree, the article seems to be covered in the stink of FUD. I don't like throwing that word at just anything (given my bias towards choice) but this statement from the image gallery pushed me to it:

Vista's Add/Remove Programs panel probably served as the inspiration for Ubuntu's software management console.

This disturbs me as the person who has written the article had not previously used Ubuntu until he/she decided to write this article. Ubuntu, I can firmly say, has been around significantly longer than Vista. Granted he/she could have said the "Windows" Add/Remove.

The section concerning Image-Editing/Picture management being a tie also seems to give more credit to Vista. The fact of having GIMP alone blows vista out of the water let alone the several picture managers available on Ubuntu.

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[delire (809063)]

So it is quite obvious that the author has very little knowledge of Ubuntu.

..and this is a good thing. Reviewers that are already an expert of the product they under trial generally have a completely different experience and appreciation of the given product than those they are writing for.

The reviews I've read on Ubuntu that are the most insightful are written by those with very little prior knowledge of either environment: as such they reveal their expectations about those products, expectations that reflect more of the 'average user's' needs than that of the expert.

I've been a daily Linux desktop user for 8 or so years, but only now am I seeing reviews by people that start with "I really like how in Ubuntu I don't have to websites to download and install software" and howtos that begin with "So you've just installed Ubuntu and want to change your theme?".

These are very good signs. People are actually trying out this stuff and getting there on their own. The software is working. Our ideas are good.

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[jonesy16 (595988)]

Except that this does nothing to protect you from drive failure.

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[jonesy16 (595988)]

RAID 1 doesn't protect you from user error, such as deleting your home directory accidentally or file system corruption. Nothing replaces the need for backup solutions, whether they're user initiated or scheduled incremental backups.

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[Fred_A (10934)]

I've looked around, and have yet to find "Add/Remove Programs", perhaps because I haven't switched to the more Windows-like interface, but "dozens of programs" seems more than a little misleading for the number of packages available in Ubuntu repositories.

According to a quick peek in my package cache, 1777 dozens of packages are available for install. Nothing misleading there, he did pluralize "dozens".
Granted maybe he should have used a better unit, like "almost two kilodozens" ?