Comments about Linux/Ubuntu from a former MS-programmer

[Sasha Tsykin]

Eric Dunbar wrote:
> On 09/04/06, Lee Revell <rlrevell at joe-job.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 2006-04-09 at 20:46 +0200, Magnus Runesson wrote:
>>> I found this blogg by a former MS-programmer that had used Ubuntu for a
>>> year. He worked for MS in 10 years.
>>>
>>> http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?p=24
>>>
>>> Its a lot of good comments, well worth reading. I includes both praise
>>> (most) and criticism.
>> "Multimedia often skips or doesn't display properly in the browser"
>>
>> IMHO this is the #1 problem facing the Linux desktop.
>>
>> The solution should be within reach - a properly tuned Linux system can
>> outperform Windows and even OSX for high end multimedia.  Unfortunately
>> much of the problem is application design - inability to run browser
>> plugins in a separate thread/process being the biggest.
> 
> I must beg to differ.
> 
> It's nice to have multimedia on the desktop but it's not a make or
> break feature since it doesn't stop you from doing _real_ work or
> interfere with your ability to do _real_ work (unless you're doing
> multimedia development in which case you'd be on Mac OS X or Windows
> anyway ;-).
> 
Firstly, we are trying to change this. Secondly, many people like to 
have multimedia working in their desktop, and will not use it otherwise. 
Without having Linux on people's home desktops, it will never succeed in 
any other environment. If they use Windows at home, they will use it at 
work too, and vice versa, therefore getting multimedia to work as 
flawlessly in Linux as it does in Windows must be a top priority.
> Bugs and flaws are ultimately Linux's achilles heal. They do keep
> people from completing their work and enjoying the experience.
> 
which is what he said.
> What keeps me from using Ubuntu on the desktop (other than a play toy)
> is not the lack of Flash, MP3 or WMV playback, but the fact that
> OpenOffice.org is as slow as molasses in January (or July if you're at
> the bottom of the world ;-), that Nautilus doesn't play nicely with
> the network, that there are numerous user interface flaws and that
> apps don't play nice with each other.
> 
openoffice is not so slow as to affect most people (all my various 
relatives like it) and very few people need a NFS at home. This is most 
definitely not what is preventing home use of Ubuntu for most users.
> Though, I disagree with an assertion on that page (don't remember if
> he wrote it or one of the respondees did) that Linux is popular as a
> server because it provides the tools that the other OSes don't -- it's
> popular because it's free ($$$, not source) and the guys (usually)
> running the servers are by-and-large the computer geeks who wrote the
> damn thing in the first place ;-).
> 
maybe, but more likely they just use a distribution which already 
exists. Why reinvent the wheel?
> There are obviously people who can argue that Linux is ready for the
> prime time and works perfectly for them on all fronts until they're
> blue in the face, but, just like in a religious debate, whether or not
> you believe isn't going to make something real!
> 
I agree entirely, it is my opinion that because of bugs and poor 
multimedia support Linux is not ready yet. For example, codecs in 64-bit 
Ubuntu, and flash don't work very well. Even in 32-bit Ubuntu, there is 
no flash 8 plugin for any browser, only flash 7. This is not exactly a 
desirable circumstance.
> The commentary in the response to this person's blog was largely
> meaningless Linux chauvinism -- rather than defending their precious
> Linux from blasphemy these individuals would better serve the
> community by looking at his criticisms and responding to them
> constructively (as opposed to defensively). Windows may be evil, it
> may be pervasive, but, damn it's good (and, this coming from a person
> who has _never_ owned a Windows running computer in his life and only
> runs Windows under emulation to run _one_ program).
> 
agreed
> Anyway, this is certainly worth a read in terms of making sure Linux
> works _before_ worrying about the fluff of multi-media:
> 
It is not fluff. It is a crucial function of a modern desktop operating 
system.
> "Gnome can detect and mount my NTFS partition and it actually
> understands the complicated NTFS format, but a permissions issue
> forces me to jump to the command line to view my files. All of these
> problems can usually be worked around by a Linux guru but they
> shouldn't exist and in many cases are just tiny bugs breaking a
> scenario from being easy.
> 
certainly something which needs to be fixed. However, it would mostly be 
geeks who run Linux and Windows at the same time. Nobody who does not 
have a certain level of computing experience would run the two together 
because ti would just be confusing.
> My diagnosis is that the problem with Linux is that it doesn't have
> anyone pushing to get the newbie bugs fixed first. At Microsoft, we
> had Program Managers and one of their responsibilities was to be
> customer advocates to prioritize the bugs for the devs to fix. In many
> open source groups,
> ****
> it sometimes appears that bugs get fixed when the dev decides to work
> on it, not because an important user scenario is broken. The Wi-Fi
> tool was broken in Gnome for many months, but the bugs just sat there
> languishing in the database. Microsoft or Apple would not have shipped
> a Wi-Fi UI that was completely broken in that way.
> 
very true, and a definite flaw in Linux. However, the voluntary and 
fragmented nature of most work on Linux means that it is much harder to 
regulate than a single corporation.

Sasha