Farewell, Ubuntu

Mon Oct 6 00:06:06 UTC 2008

It looks like you might be looking for a MAC, and not a Linux or Windows machine!

Ubuntu comes to me as my personal choice as far as operating system. Now, this is my choice, and it varies according to what the user needs. Linux is an operating system that requires time to learn, time to troubleshoot and you should actually enjoy the time you spend doing that stuff. In my opinion is well spent time and I take it as personal achievement. For example, I just finished writing a simple shell script that will make my life a bit easier... and I'm proud of that.

I used Windows my whole life, and one of the things I used to hate was security. I had 1x AV, 1x firewall, 2x spyware programs plus IE and firefox security tools on my desktop. Every year I had to renew those programs, and every few years not only I had to buy another copy of Windows but also drastically upgrade my hardware. Not to mention how Windows drags after you install a few heavy applications.

My servers at home not long ago (aprox. 4 months) were running mmx processors with 200MHz. This is something I would never be able to do with Windows. My daughter PC (a P2) dual boots between Edubuntu and XP. My brother in law PC also has Ubuntu. He doesn't know anything about Linux, but somehow he can do stuff on GUI that I only know how to do via CLI.

I'm a big fun of Ubuntu due to the amount of free software available for download. No other distro has a so easy to use package manager like Ubuntu. If this was different I might already have changed to a different distro.

Linux is open for customization, and one must be wiling to learn how to customize it to get it working properly. At least we don't have to program our own driver anymore like in the old days. This brings another issue, DRIVERS. It's not Ubuntu (or any other distro) fault that most vendors do not provide drivers for Linux. Most vendors are still thinking that Windows is the only way, which is wrong. Nowadays with the technology we have for virtualization is becoming hard to create a boundary between the many different OSs. You can have Windows MAC and Linux running on the same machine and at the same time. This brings you to the truthfull best OS of all. And I can tell you which is.....  They all are!! Every OS has something good to bring to the table, depending on what you necessities are. In my humble opnion, you can use something like this to decide:

MAC - Ready and easy to use. Perfect for the person who does not want to spend time fixing computer problems (and have lots of money in their prockets)
Windows - Best for compatibility with hardware and programs. You choice for most games as well. Good for the user that doesn't care too much about security
Linux - Best OS for customization. Allows you to take the OS to any level you want, as long as you are willing to spend the time to learn.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I'm sure that we will get a lot more here!! 

Regards,

Victor Mendonça
IT Worker - Linux enthusiast
http://wazem.org/

----- Original Message ----
From: dartrod <dartrod at airsurfer.ca>
To: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 5, 2008 7:31:57 PM
Subject: Re: Farewell, Ubuntu

Thanx for the reply, I will file a report.  

Update!!! tried to report a bug and neither Ubuntu 8.04  or
Hardy Heron is recognized couldn't get any further, yet another
problem!!!!

Don't get me wrong I am looking fory a superior replacement for
Windows that the average user can Install and use out of the box.

I am not looking to switch one set of problems for another.

My wife daughter and grandson would also be able to use Ubuntu if they
were provided with a perfectly functioning computer, that's my point.

As to Ubuntu sound problems, Google"Ubuntu sound problems" and see what
you get.  Sound in Ubuntu 8.04 is a huge problem.  I am surprised this
issue wasn't addressed immediately.

I am not giving up on Ubuntu yet, I am going out of my way (buying a
computer specifically for the purpose)  This isn't even a dual boot
machine.

I sure don't agree with your last statement at this point, except that
Vista is a giant step backward.

I agree that Unix and Linux have been used in the back end to great
success, however I am talking about the desktop.

I am looking forward to the next iteration of Ubuntu.  Hopefully my
expectations will be met.

Ralph Janke wrote: 
dartrod wrote:

1. Printer installation was not as straight forward as it should be, but 
eventually resolved.  Not a user friendly experience.

Well.. that can happen with Windows as well. Especially Vista is
very bad with supporting old peripherals.

On the other hand, I just bought an HP All-in-one printer here (my
usual one is still on the way). I intended to install the driver and
was positively surprised. Ubuntu 8.04 informed me just after
plugging the printer in the usb port that I could use it. There
could not be any better usability for this particular printer.

2. Lack of display control from the desktop.  Resolved by switching 
monitors until I found a monitor that was satisfactory.  Again not a 
user friendly solution.

I had similar problems with Windows before. Again, I agree
we need to work harder to resolve the remaining issues, but that
does not put Ubuntu or Linux in a worse spot than Windows.

3.  Sound doesn't work.  I have searched for a solution that doesn't 
involve rebuilding whatever.  Again not user friendly and a show stopper.

Again, I personally have not found any hardware yet to have this
problem with Ubuntu. I have with Windows. However, for both 7.10
and 8.04, I have seen a lot of support requests and bugs for this
issue in the Ubuntu database.

I am awaiting the next version hoping the sound problem will be 
addressed.  I know, I know, that hacking the distro and hardware could 
likely solve these problems.  All that would prove is that Ubuntu is not 
ready for the average user.

Well, if we would get the information on how hacking the distro would
solve the problem, we would include the fixes and therefore over time
disprove your statement that Ubuntu is not ready yet for the average
end-user.

Btw. My wife (not a computer geek) and my 10-year old son are using
exclusively Ubuntu for the last 4 years. Given, I have installed their
computers, but then, you do not buy a PC without installed OS anyway.
Given that if you would be able to buy your computer in the shop already
configured and installed, you would have the same experience as with
the Windows computer you get currently (very likely even better). Adding
additional software on Windows PC causes often far worse problems than
with Ubuntu. Under this perspective, Ubuntu is far more ready for the
average end-user than Vista is.

If the sound problem and other problems are not solved with the next 
version of Ubuntu it will be Bye Bye Ubuntu and I will not recommending 
Ubuntu  to anyone.

Well, in contrast to Windows, you have the opportunity to
support the efforts to resolve these issue. Please
file a report with all the necessary details on
http://answer.launchpad.net
or http://bugs.launchpad.net , and maybe test possible fixes if they are
announced.

Windows has it's problems but they can be resolved fairly easily by the 
average user and if not there is a ton of expertise readily available.

Well, I am an IT professional for 25 years and I have never had more
problems
with any system but Windows. Some say, it is supposed to be like that
because
that means that I could always have a job. However, I believe Linux is
the future.
Also, compare Ubuntu with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 not with Windows XP.
Linux
has not even half the lifetime as Windows has, but already a comparable
user-friendliness
as Windows with a far superior stability (I vever ran a Windows server
for 3 years without
reboot).

And the biggest plus for Linux is, everybody can participate in making
it better. I understand
that it is often frustrating when issue that happen to you personally
are not resolved
within short time, one can get very frustrated. On the other hand, there
is a lot of
expertise available for Linux and Unix systems. Otherwise, it would not
be the case that
world-wide the financial industry are changing their back-office systems
to Linux, while
almost all high-availability systems in the telecommunication industry
are Unix systems (in
the future likely to be Linux or Open Source Unix).

Therefore, again my plea. Please report your issues at the central place
for ubuntu, that
we can take care of them.

Thanks for your help in making Linux better every day!

- Ralph

My configuration is:

AMD Athelon 64 LE 1640 2.6 GHZ 45 watt L2-1MB AM2
AMD Athelon 64 original Stock Fan and Heatsink
Kingston DDR2 PC2-5400 1GN/667 MHz
BIOSTAR MCP6P-M2 (NVIDIA GF6150, SATAII, RAID, DDR2-800
NVIDIA GeForce 6150 GPU Memory share upto 512MB
Onboard High Definition Audio
Onboard Network Card
450W ATX Power Supply
Western Digital CaviarSE 160GB 7200RPM SATA
LG DVD-RAM GSA-H55N

Ralph Walker
Calmar, Alberta

2  PC's and 2 laptops in the house.

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