[ubuntu-vancouver] Showing Off Ubuntu

[Russell McOrmond]

Bob Jonkman wrote:
> I'd peg Desktop Linux usability at about the same level as Windows
> 386 was in 1989, with Ubuntu as the usability leader equivalent to
> Windows 3.1.

  This isn't my experience at all.  I just installed Ubuntu 9.10 on a
(for me relatively) modern machine and with all the tools and eye candy
I'd put it in the same cloud as MacOS X and Vista/7.  There are things
which I might think the alternatives do better and things that Ubuntu
does better, but I wouldn't put Ubuntu as being 10+ years in the past.

  It is also not just because I'm a more technical user.  My mother
certainly isn't a technical user and she has been using RedHat, then
Fedora, and (as I bring a new machine) now Ubuntu ever since she had a
computer separate from her sons (IE: when we left to University/College
back in the Amiga and early Pentium days).

  She interacts with other people who have Windows and Mac computers and
the thing she remarks about the most is the lack of viruses and other
melodious software on her Linux computer, not some sense that these
other people have computers that are easier to use.

  She doesn't know who to ask for support for her computer (She is in
Sudbury -- anyone know of some trustworthy support companies?), but that
wouldn't be any different if she had any other type of operating system.
 Most of the maintenance her sons do remotely over the network, or when
we visit Sudbury in person a few times yearly.


  I agree with you on the percentages (IE: Linux isn't a high percentage
yet, even if far larger than what IDC and other ideologically limited
statistics companies put it) and that FLOSS will eventually take over
desktop and mobile OSs.  I'm just not convinced we are as behind on
usability as appeared to be suggested.

-- 
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