I try out Ubuntu with each release as well, and I always go back to using Windows. It's not just the name that sends me there either.
1. Installing software is a pain if its not already in one of the Download Managers 2. Daily operations are not intuitive 3. Non-daily operations are a pain in the ass that require a terminal. 4. No native DirectX support and as good as Wine is, it's still not as good of quality as REAL DirectX and it's not as fast. 5. Why doesn't Nautilus have a button to switch to admin access? Or atleast prompt for the password if I want to add/edit a file requiring those permissions, as opposed to just giving me the middle finger? 6. Mounting/Unmounting a hard drives. Why is it that when i mount a hard drive and enter the admin password, it's available for all the users on the computer? WTF? It should be profile specific. And access settings should be EASY to figure out. I spent hours trying to do this with no luck. 7. You can't create a guest profile without a password????
Ubuntu has great potential and has plenty of eyecandy now, however it is still geared for a geek with an understanding of kernels and everything under the cover. It's not for the average person, and until then it's going to have it's quirks and have a smaller user base. As an average user, I should be able to use it's full potential without EVER going into a terminal and typing. Grandma is never going to go into a terminal and type "apt get...." or "sudo....". It's just not going to happen.
Taylor: Quite a few of your complaints are being fixed in 8.10 or upcoming releases. There is a guest account created by default in 8.10 so you can enable or disable the account as you see fit.
1. Software installs are only difficult if there is not a .deb package available. If there is a .deb file for the software you can just double click and install it. That's even faster than Windows click next 5 times to start. I will admit that installing something that does not have a deb package is harder but hopefully linux as a whole will fix that some day.
2. Daily operations such as? You may not like how Gnome is setup then. Maybe give KDE4 a shot and see how you like it. I started off using KDE because it was much closer to Windows but now I'm on Gnome because everything works more reliably for me than early KDE4.
3. Also being worked on. There are new graphical tools coming out for many common things you may have to do. CLI is still faster if you know what you are doing but it's nice to have the option.
4. DX is a microsoft product so there will never be a native release. Wine works well enough for many gamers. If OpenGL took off again there would be many more native linux games available.
5. It's a security 'feature' for linux but I do like you idea though. Maybe submit it to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ and it could be implemented in an upcoming release.
6. Can you do that on Windows? I've never heard of restricting access to a physical hard drive. Network drives yes, but physical, no.
Linux is not for everyone, that I won't dispute, but the last time I compiled my own kernel was in 2003 when I was doing a Gentoo stage 2 install. Anymore I just install the updates Ubuntu offers me and it's worked well for me so far. I use Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop and home server but my main PC is still Windows for gaming and for some programs I can't get the alternative for on Linux.
For files that are not offered in the repositories try http://getdeb.net I've found a lot of great programs on there that I would have had to install manually.
Sounds like you don't need Linux, why are you even trying to migrate to an OS other than Windows when you expect it to work like Windows anyway?
I agree it's not always so intuitive, but I don't understand why you expect DirectX in Linux when it's a proprietary MS technology (even MacOS X doesn't have DirectX for God's sake).
There is a learning curve, and no it's not as noob-friendly as Windows or OS X;
I've switch three pretty computer illiterate people over to Ubuntu because they were sick of Windoze running slow. As long as they know what to click on to open their internet browser and listen to their music they're perfectly happy. And don't get me started about installs in Windoze. Linux takes a couple clicks and your admin password in Synaptic or Add/Remove. Windoze takes 3 reboots and a lifetime of selecting the "No I don't want to send you all my personal information so I can register my product and you can spam me with offers." option that pops up every time I run said software.
Next time you try out Ubuntu go to their forums. Most, if not all of the issues you pointed out can be resolved there fairly painlessly.
Terminals kick ass. So much easier than digging through 7 or 8 layers of Windoze options.
"while it never seems to do everything we need it to, it's so tantalizingly close that we just can't help trying it out 6 months later"
I so agree, there always seems to be something that doesn't quite work properly with my laptop. That said, 8.04 ran quite alright, even had 3D support!
Thanks Protoz for the detailed response. I really really want to be able to use Linux. And I think i COULD possibly make that switch if it (except for DirectX reasoning)
1. Yes, I did know about .deb files and they do work good. However, it seems like 25% or more of the software out there doesn't have one of those and you have to go chugging back into the terminal and hope you have all the prerequisites or you wind up going down a rabbit hole of dependencies. I guess that's the double edge sword of having options. Some programmers don't go the extra step of creating a DEB file and thus leave out possible users.
2. Daily Operations such as listening to music that is on another hard drive. I have to mount it before playing the music. The other hard drive is a Windows drive that is NTFS. I don't want my roommates to have full access to that hard drive so when i'm done listening to music, i have to unmount the drive because Linux apparently doesn't listen to NTFS permissions. ??? In addition to #1 and the Nautilus admin annoyance, these are probably my main gripes.
3/4. Sounds good and I've never heard of CLI. Did I mention Ubuntu needs to come with a "Welcome to Ubuntu. Dummies proceed this way.." guide that tells them all this stuff. And hopefully Steam/Valve will support the new OpenGL standard. But I have my doubts.
5. I looked and it does seem to be listed as an idea already (though it's closed ??). Glad to know I'm not the only one.
6. Has to do with what i'm doing on #2. Either support NTFS permission settings on the hard drive, or else require other logged in users to enter the admin password to mount it. It seems like a security flaw to ignore NTFS permissions and allow other users on the computer to have access to a hard drive just because the admin mounted it under a different user name.
crsh, I'd like to move to Linux because it is Open Source and free. Enough said.
@Taylor: A easier way to install packages is to type in Firefox (location bar), "apt:packagename". If you need to install more than one, use "apt:package1;apt:package2" (yeah, it's not ideal, but it's being worked on).
And if you encounter a piece of software without a deb package, I would make one myself (just Google a tutorial and there are some pieces of software that do it for you; debcreator is one), and send it back to the developer with a letter lecturing him. Sometimes, though, it might be that the piece of software is too experimental, and they don't want to promise anything.
And I couldn't agree more with crsh. To all potential users, LINUX IS NOT WINDOWS. Don't expect it to become Windows (unless Windows 7 is actually Linux disguised).
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the only thing that sucks about it is the name, i guess its not as bad as intrepid ibex
I try out Ubuntu with each release as well, and I always go back to using Windows. It's not just the name that sends me there either.
1. Installing software is a pain if its not already in one of the Download Managers
2. Daily operations are not intuitive
3. Non-daily operations are a pain in the ass that require a terminal.
4. No native DirectX support and as good as Wine is, it's still not as good of quality as REAL DirectX and it's not as fast.
5. Why doesn't Nautilus have a button to switch to admin access? Or atleast prompt for the password if I want to add/edit a file requiring those permissions, as opposed to just giving me the middle finger?
6. Mounting/Unmounting a hard drives. Why is it that when i mount a hard drive and enter the admin password, it's available for all the users on the computer? WTF? It should be profile specific. And access settings should be EASY to figure out. I spent hours trying to do this with no luck.
7. You can't create a guest profile without a password????
Ubuntu has great potential and has plenty of eyecandy now, however it is still geared for a geek with an understanding of kernels and everything under the cover. It's not for the average person, and until then it's going to have it's quirks and have a smaller user base. As an average user, I should be able to use it's full potential without EVER going into a terminal and typing. Grandma is never going to go into a terminal and type "apt get...." or "sudo....". It's just not going to happen.
Taylor: Quite a few of your complaints are being fixed in 8.10 or upcoming releases. There is a guest account created by default in 8.10 so you can enable or disable the account as you see fit.
1. Software installs are only difficult if there is not a .deb package available. If there is a .deb file for the software you can just double click and install it. That's even faster than Windows click next 5 times to start. I will admit that installing something that does not have a deb package is harder but hopefully linux as a whole will fix that some day.
2. Daily operations such as? You may not like how Gnome is setup then. Maybe give KDE4 a shot and see how you like it. I started off using KDE because it was much closer to Windows but now I'm on Gnome because everything works more reliably for me than early KDE4.
3. Also being worked on. There are new graphical tools coming out for many common things you may have to do. CLI is still faster if you know what you are doing but it's nice to have the option.
4. DX is a microsoft product so there will never be a native release. Wine works well enough for many gamers. If OpenGL took off again there would be many more native linux games available.
5. It's a security 'feature' for linux but I do like you idea though. Maybe submit it to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ and it could be implemented in an upcoming release.
6. Can you do that on Windows? I've never heard of restricting access to a physical hard drive. Network drives yes, but physical, no.
Linux is not for everyone, that I won't dispute, but the last time I compiled my own kernel was in 2003 when I was doing a Gentoo stage 2 install. Anymore I just install the updates Ubuntu offers me and it's worked well for me so far. I use Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop and home server but my main PC is still Windows for gaming and for some programs I can't get the alternative for on Linux.
For files that are not offered in the repositories try http://getdeb.net I've found a lot of great programs on there that I would have had to install manually.
Agreed!
Sounds like you don't need Linux, why are you even trying to migrate to an OS other than Windows when you expect it to work like Windows anyway?
I agree it's not always so intuitive, but I don't understand why you expect DirectX in Linux when it's a proprietary MS technology (even MacOS X doesn't have DirectX for God's sake).
There is a learning curve, and no it's not as noob-friendly as Windows or OS X;
@Taylor
I've switch three pretty computer illiterate people over to Ubuntu because they were sick of Windoze running slow. As long as they know what to click on to open their internet browser and listen to their music they're perfectly happy. And don't get me started about installs in Windoze. Linux takes a couple clicks and your admin password in Synaptic or Add/Remove. Windoze takes 3 reboots and a lifetime of selecting the "No I don't want to send you all my personal information so I can register my product and you can spam me with offers." option that pops up every time I run said software.
Next time you try out Ubuntu go to their forums. Most, if not all of the issues you pointed out can be resolved there fairly painlessly.
Terminals kick ass. So much easier than digging through 7 or 8 layers of Windoze options.
"while it never seems to do everything we need it to, it's so tantalizingly close that we just can't help trying it out 6 months later"
I so agree, there always seems to be something that doesn't quite work properly with my laptop. That said, 8.04 ran quite alright, even had 3D support!
Thanks Protoz for the detailed response. I really really want to be able to use Linux. And I think i COULD possibly make that switch if it (except for DirectX reasoning)
1. Yes, I did know about .deb files and they do work good. However, it seems like 25% or more of the software out there doesn't have one of those and you have to go chugging back into the terminal and hope you have all the prerequisites or you wind up going down a rabbit hole of dependencies. I guess that's the double edge sword of having options. Some programmers don't go the extra step of creating a DEB file and thus leave out possible users.
2. Daily Operations such as listening to music that is on another hard drive. I have to mount it before playing the music. The other hard drive is a Windows drive that is NTFS. I don't want my roommates to have full access to that hard drive so when i'm done listening to music, i have to unmount the drive because Linux apparently doesn't listen to NTFS permissions. ??? In addition to #1 and the Nautilus admin annoyance, these are probably my main gripes.
3/4. Sounds good and I've never heard of CLI. Did I mention Ubuntu needs to come with a "Welcome to Ubuntu. Dummies proceed this way.." guide that tells them all this stuff. And hopefully Steam/Valve will support the new OpenGL standard. But I have my doubts.
5. I looked and it does seem to be listed as an idea already (though it's closed ??). Glad to know I'm not the only one.
6. Has to do with what i'm doing on #2. Either support NTFS permission settings on the hard drive, or else require other logged in users to enter the admin password to mount it. It seems like a security flaw to ignore NTFS permissions and allow other users on the computer to have access to a hard drive just because the admin mounted it under a different user name.
crsh,
I'd like to move to Linux because it is Open Source and free. Enough said.
@Taylor: A easier way to install packages is to type in Firefox (location bar), "apt:packagename". If you need to install more than one, use "apt:package1;apt:package2" (yeah, it's not ideal, but it's being worked on).
And if you encounter a piece of software without a deb package, I would make one myself (just Google a tutorial and there are some pieces of software that do it for you; debcreator is one), and send it back to the developer with a letter lecturing him. Sometimes, though, it might be that the piece of software is too experimental, and they don't want to promise anything.
And I couldn't agree more with crsh. To all potential users, LINUX IS NOT WINDOWS. Don't expect it to become Windows (unless Windows 7 is actually Linux disguised).