Walt Mossberg gives Ubuntu the cold-shoulder
Captain Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal Brigade delivered a pounding frontal attack to the good folks in the Ubuntu bunker today, sounding off about the Linux OS distribution that's been taking a lot of people (but not old Mossy) by storm. According to his review yesterday of the burgeoning (and free) Canonical operating system, Walt Mossberg says that although Ubuntu is, "Relatively slick," he feels that there are too many, "little complications and hassles that will quickly frustrate most people who just want to use their computers, not maintain or tweak them." Apparently, after testing on a stock Dell system with the software pre-installed, Walt argued that the lack of codecs for playing some audio and video formats, trouble connecting iPods, and a trackpad which can't be adjusted, are just a few of the problems that most people will find intolerable in the open-source OS. Mossberg talks about users who, "...simply want their digital products to operate as promised, with as little maintenance and hassle as possible," and feels the answer for them is Windows or OS X, not the new, untested, and unpolished Ubuntu. While we don't agree on every point, perhaps this will push Canonical to tighten up its OS and really target the mainstream. [Warning: read link requires subscription]
[Via Crave]
