“I like Ubuntu. I just do. There’s a simplicity about it that appeals. Every successive release adds an additional layer of abstraction between the user and the ‘plumbing’. While some might pass this off as soft-hearted pandering to a demographic that was never meant to use Linux in the first place, ‘Debian for the Lazy’, there is a gentle delight in taking a smooth, working OS and working your way down into its innards.”
excellent writing style, i really enjoyed the article! and, i must admit, i agree wholeheartedly with its sentiments.
I agree. It’s very refreshing to see someone so enthusiastic about their experience. Excellent writing style, quite engaging. Good job.
I will not hide my bias either. Ubuntu is my Darling. It cradled me in its soft, brown arms, soothing the burns and blisters of years of Windows and RPMs. I will say this: Working with Dapper on standard desktop hardware is a pleasant experience.
First of all, the author says he’s biased, wich is imho a good thing considering the rest of the article. also, it’s clearly stated it’s not a review/preview whatever.. another good point.
Though he speaks mostly of the good things in ubunutu, i found it to be quite true.
IMHO it’s a nice read for anyone, familiar or not with ubuntu.
I’ve used Fedora, Slackware, Suse and i would have to say that default Gnome Desktop of Ubuntu is fantastic. I like it that you can’t tell where the OS stops, and the “special system configuration tools” of Ubuntu start. Seemless is the way to go.
A word about OEM installs of a system as good as Ubuntu. If you use Windows, please purchase hardware that is reported to work under Linux / Ubuntu. This way hardware component makers will learn to support Linux, or fall off the face of the earth. OEMs will then have a lot of hardware that will work under Linux. OEM installs will then cause larger software companies to support Linux.
Just my $0.02
I started out playing with Linux many years ago. Playing with redhat, suse, mandrake, mepis, slackware, etc… I found Ubuntu right after Hoary was released and have been extremely impresssed.
If you want a very polished desktop with a big focus on integration and things that “Just work TM”, check out Ubuntu. During each release cycle, a large number of “Specifications” are created on ways to improve the desktop. During each cycle, these specs are voted on and if approved, they get worked on. Some of these are very ambitious such as, “Command Line Disenegration”. The Ubuntu community is looking towards the future.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/CommandLineDisintegrati…
I’ve always thought of the commandline as a very easy interface for users.
It’s simple in that only one thing happens on the screen at a time. You type a command and wait for it to execute.
which means that you can’t get confused as to what is going on.
The commandline also doesn’t popup unintelligable messages and expected times.
The problem is just that users have been conditioned away from the commandline by windows.
– Jesse McNelis
I agree. The commandline is much much faster for me. Where in the gui can you hit CTRL R for a reverse search through all previous commands? You can’t
that is only in bash.
The point is still that most users find the terminal a scary thing and older users equate dos with legacy applications. The reason there hasn’t truly been “a year of linux on the desktop” is because simple tasks still require the commandline. Tasks such as installing nvidia drivers, setting up dualhead, etc should not require a normal user to use the commandline.
Distributions like Ubuntu are changing this, but to learn Linux, you shouldn’t need to become a geek. It’s not fair to the users expecting everyone to become shell monkeys.
The point is still that most users find the terminal a scary thing and older users equate dos with legacy applications.
Word. As somebody who tends to transpose letters and numbers when writing and typing, and grew up with those legacy apps, where a simple typeo could really frell up the system and there wasn’t a clear and easy way to undo … I am no fan of the CLI.
(Not that things can’t be borked up in a GUI, but when one of my co-workers manages to do this, it’s pretty straightforward to me where to begin looking. With a CLI, if you don’t know the exact command to type in … nothing’s getting fixed.)
The reason there hasn’t truly been “a year of linux on the desktop” is because simple tasks still require the commandline. Tasks such as installing nvidia drivers, setting up dualhead, etc should not require a normal user to use the commandline.
WORD.
Distributions like Ubuntu are changing this, but to learn Linux, you shouldn’t need to become a geek. It’s not fair to the users expecting everyone to become shell monkeys.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (It’s like expecting people to become experts in auto mechanics so that they can drive a car.)
“The reason there hasn’t truly been “a year of linux on the desktop” is because simple tasks still require the commandline. Tasks such as installing nvidia drivers, setting up dualhead, etc should not require a normal user to use the commandline. ”
WORD.
“Distributions like Ubuntu are changing this, but to learn Linux, you shouldn’t need to become a geek. It’s not fair to the users expecting everyone to become shell monkeys. ”
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (It’s like expecting people to become experts in auto mechanics so that they can drive a car.)
The problem with Ubuntu’s popularity is that less-experienced users will generalize Ubuntu’s shortcomings across all distros.
Suse is a long-established distro that has built up what is probably the strongest management/configuration infrastructure you can get, at least in a “free” distro. You can get Suse installed and running, as well as maintain it, without ever having to see a CLI or even console text. There are patches and hacks beneath the surface to deal with things broken-acpi implementation or seamless integration of wpa into the network subsystem.
Sure, for many people Yast is a love-it or hate-it management package, but it is proven and simplifies things for those new-to-linux users that are used to the “windows way” and whether the hard-core unix-method developers like it or not, they need to be accomodated. Plus, yast offers an ncurses interface that gives you the exact same level of management from a console in case you find yourself locked out of X, and for the tinkerers you can still modify config files by hand without breaking anything (for the most part).
Yast used to be the differentiator for paid-Suse versus free downloads, but since Novell GPL’d it I’m really surprised that more distros haven’t tried to port it. Having to port an existing app to match a distro’s filesystem/component layout has to be easier than building new tools from the ground up.
Distro’s often try and customize elements of the DE as a way of establishing individuality or some other unique appeal, which is perfectly fine, but there needs to be a better level of co-operation on core things like system layouts and configuration, or at least some sort of common abstraction layer distros can customize to the uniqueness of their platform while presenting a common-standard front-end for users across all DE’s / distros.
I guess I just think that if some sort of unified approach is found to address configuration/maintenance, to distro packagers could spend more focus on developing DE’s/apps without having to re-invent the wheel.
Sure, freedom is paramount and choice is good, and Yast isn’t the ideal solution, but I’m still surprised that there hasn’t been more of a move in this direction.
Just my 2c…
One reason the command line has been given a bad wrap is that it’s absolutely horrible on Windows. I can’t stand it. It doesn’t have all the nice features that you have in Linux with bash and even OLE automation from the command line often goes to a GUI (which causes you to lose focus). On Windows, if I don’t have cygwin, I just stick with the GUI since it feels a lot more comfortable.
On Linux, the command line is easy to master and feel comfortable with. It’s often the quickest way to get things done, which is why I’d bet most Linux users, no matter how newbie they are, will eventually *want* to do somethings from the command line (even if they stay 99% of the time with the GUI).
That being said, I agree with you. The command line shouldn’t be a requirement for Linux, any more than being a handy man be a requirement for owning a house. It’s something that you should be able to eaze into. Ubuntu works beautifullyfor the commandline-phobic if you’ve been diligent enough to pick the right hardware and don’t have strong multimedia needs. Ubuntu works beautifully for the commandline-phobic if you have someone who is not commandline-phobic help you install and configure it (especially multimedia, which is not hard, but requires a bit of work). But it hasn’t quite reached the stage where a newbie can go into a Future Shop or Best Buy, buy an arbitrary PC and a 100 page copy of “Ubuntu for dummies with CD included”, install Ubuntu unassisted, and live happily ever after without ever having to touch the command line. That scenario is still a few years away.
But it hasn’t quite reached the stage where a newbie can go into a Future Shop or Best Buy, buy an arbitrary PC and a 100 page copy of “Ubuntu for dummies with CD included”, install Ubuntu unassisted, and live happily ever after without ever having to touch the command line. That scenario is still a few years away.
I couldn’t agree with you more! Projects like Ubuntu are out to change that aspect though. “Linux for human beings” is a pretty way of saying “Linux for people who don’t want to become geeks”. The large Linux on the desktop push has been going on for 4-5 years tops and look at what has already been accomplished?
Linux is the snowball that slowly grows exponentially. Soon enough, it will become an avalanche and everyone will know about it.
not all dapper related:
– no native Gnome Print Dialog at Firefox
– no PDF Print with Gnome Print Dialog on every app which uses GPD (for example Epiphany)
– no tab history at Epiphany on every HTML Textbox (for example search and user login boxes)
– if I umount a USB drive/stick, I can’t mount it again (I must reinsert the USB drive/stick)
It will be heavy to find other weak points on Dapper, so Dapper will be very nice but not perfect
if you have some time, can you file some bugs on those, or at least see if anyone else has? while they might not seem like much, every bit helps
“if I umount a USB drive/stick, I can’t mount it again (I must reinsert the USB drive/stick)”
I don’t know what version you’ve been using, but after unmounting a usb drive, you should see an unmounted drive symbol in nautilus’ computer location, so you can remount from there.
Frankly having simpler configuration tools that still present users with the options they need (especially ones with simple and advanced modes so nothing is missing, yet it’s still easy to use) is nothing to be opposed to. Working with configuration files may give people a fuzzy feeling when they are finally successfull, but getting things done in a fraction of the time and knowing they are done right for you the first time is much better.
Yes, but when those “simpler” configuration tools are cumbersome and unreliable, it’s good to be able to easily break through the layers and get to the real solution.
You’re right, fortunately most configuration tools in Linux are meerely front-ends to the configuration files, because of that you can choose which approach you want to take. The best part about this is that graphical configuration tools in Linux, no matter how popular they get, should never mean the exclusion of configuration files.
[i]fortunately most configuration tools in Linux are meerely front-ends to the configuration files</>
This is the proper way to do gui configuration tools. I frequently use these tools. However, I can’t stand tools like YAST that fire up a big configuration “Wizard” that goes through and undoes all you hand-made changes.
The command-line and the GUI must remain friends! I remember when configuring DOS/WIndows was done via editing text files – autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini, sys.ini. Myab the horror of the Windows registry never come to the Free world!
I’ve never experienced problems with YaST’s wizards (probably because I rarely hand-edit config files), but if they have a tendency to undo hand-made changes, this is a bug to be fixed, not necessarily a problem with the wizard approach.
That being said, I do find the wizards in YaST to be too unintuitive at times. Wizards are by definition supposed to be linear, and yet in YaST one is still faced with heierarchies of settings, just all displayed in one window instead of separate ones as in Windows.
For instance, setting up package selection during installation requires the user to leave the overall summary screen, make the changes, and then return to the summary screen before continuing. Why can’t there just be an “advanced setup” option that incorporates these advanced settings in a linear manner?
Similar YaST issues can be found in other areas, too: the network devices and printer configurations especially come to mind as confusing tools to work with since they don’t stick to a purely linear approach. While the interface is mostly a linear wizard, it also incoporates the equivalent of a heierarchy of dialog boxes, but all dislayed in the same window, which results in the end-user being confused about where he is in the process and why he’s revisiting previous steps.
All this being said, YaST is a big step in the right direction in terms of giving hardware configuration a GUI. But it needs work to make all of its settings visible, either through a better, linear wizard approach, or by abandoning the wizard approach for a windowed heierarchy approach. I’m in favor of the latter: the web-like “one-page-fits-all” solution is notoriously poor for managing complex tasks with branchy natures, like system configuration.
…Perhaps if other distros took more of an interest in YaST, we could get it fixed faster!
(…then again, maybe there would just be infighting and stagnation; you never know.)
“Yes, but when those “simpler” configuration tools are cumbersome and unreliable, it’s good to be able to easily break through the layers and get to the real solution.”
That’s because the software under the covers works well.
Which leads me into my next point.
Shouldn’t we have the same focus on the upper layers of software so that it will Just Work(tm).We should want to make our gui software work and not be so accepting of it’s failures. That IMHO is wrong.
“Yes, but when those ‘harder’ configuration tools are ‘cumbersome’ and ‘hard to get right first time’, it’s good to be able to easily rise through the layers point-click-type-enter…”
A few days ago I took the time to throw away the old CDs that I had, like Delphi, VS.Net, and several CDs of Linux. I’m just keeping the CDs of Breezy and Dapper now.
Thank goodness there’s Ubuntu and Debian.
I have used gentoo, Salckware, Redhat and Mandrake. Currently I have Arch Linux and Ubuntu.
Arch Linux is anytime faster than Drapper, it has a faster package release ( Gnome 2.14.1 was in repositories the day it was released), is more lightweight the Ubuntu, has a much friendlier package manager — OK I can go about the good things of Arch, but I have to admit that it is Ubuntu that I use more and recommend to all my friends.
Arch I have been using since a long time and have the correct configurations in place, well If I have to build an Arch system from scratch, even I will find it daunting task and might forget so many things that comprise my desktop. With Ubuntu, all those come by default.
What I like the most about Ubuntu is its simplicity in terms of providing usable desktop from the install phase. I do MY work on Ubuntu instead of working to make Ubuntu usable. The only thing I need to do with Ubuntu is Automatix, period.
Ubuntu is really a port between the powerful and stable debian and a Windows type distro, providing the good things of both.
Be it mounting Windows drive, automount USB, easy printer conf or the simple package installation using synaptic, Ubuntu simply excells at this.
Waiting eagerly for the ultimate “polished” Drapper in 06/06.
yeah i agree. i love how it tries to “just work” without trying to change every little thing so everything breaks if you decide to check under the hood
not to the point where it can replace windows or macosx.
With 5.10 the setup was not quite right for me. I could fix the Xorg.conf, smbfs mounting etc in a matter of minutes.
I still would not set it up for my wife or parents;
– Nautilus crashes often or hangs due to the vagaries of mounting remote windows/nfs shares that no longer respond for some reason.
– The defaut mounting is through the gnome vfs and not a smbfs mount, which would enable the share to be seen from non -gnome programs.
– Some apps (gtk and others, non-gnome) open their windows with the bottom or sides off-screen (and I have 1280×1024) which is a pain
– and a zillion annoyances coming from unpolished programs, lack of integration (as per the various toolkits used), and confused goals (the ubuntu symbol on the menu bar looks like a ‘start’ button, but isn’t so why bother having one or go all the way and map the ‘start key’ to it etc.)
I am still using it for development purposes, and there the system shines. For 1/1000th of the users, that is.
kind’a typical for gnome – the gnome dev’s have to do a lot of work to support standard gnome features, it’s not consistent until you do a lot of work to make it so. ubuntu does a lot of work to make gnome better, more consistent and easier to use. on one hand, that’s good. on the other hand, half that work wouldn’t be necessary on KDE… and as KDE’s my favorite DE, i’d rather see ’em spend time on that 😉
well, wishfull thinking, we’ll see what the future will bring.
that’s what kubuntu is all about, baby
i believe anybody who wants to learn linux is going in a new direction, i guess that’s the idea of open source…to get away from expensive proprietary computing. and for me, joe average, linux is fun to work with. but ubuntu is not my distro of choice, for me it’s pc linux all the way.
i’ve always liked simple, transparent, do-it-yourself distros (slack, arch, lfs). yes, i’ve heard about ubuntu, but i thought it’s just another user friendly wannabe, you know slow, messy, confusing…. well, just until i tried it myself. yes i like ubuntu now, and i’m going to make it my primary OS. i think, ubuntu with its philosophy (and strong backend) is very promising atempt to create alternative full-value desktop and with vista’s delay it has more time to grow expand..
agreed – they try and make it friendly without messing up the system
Is there bluetooth support in there yet without rolling your own? I just don’t have the time to tinker with all that stuff anymore and since my wife bought me a new Wireless mouse/keyboard I just haven’t booted any linux at all. The old keyboard took a full Dr. Pepper to the keypad (wife’s fault). It’s interesting that the mouse and keyboard works fine for changing Bios settings and what-not but as soon as a linux boot manager pops up it strangely no longer works. Not that this is critical, as I understand it Linux doesn’t support my sound card yet either. Creative X-Fi. But being able to boot into it would go a long way toward my trying it out.
Dapper has good Bluetooth support right out of the box. Well, at least it does for me. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Ubuntu’s desktop seems very smooth and polished, but on the other hand I am *much* more productive and in control when I use KDE apps. The “abstraction” layer of Gnome and Ubuntu’s tweaks that someone mentioned can be comfortable, but separating newbies from fundamental concepts like the system hierarchy and configuration text files also takes away some of the sweetest aspects of a UNIX-like system.
You gonna try a new distro? Well make a backup of your present /etc and copy and paste xorg, hotkeys, samba, user and whatever settings to quickly set up your new system. Have different configuration files for different scenarios. The possibilities are almost endless. Of course such things can be learnt later on, but many newbies do not even know about these possibilities. If a Linux system do feel sluggish, or the default GUI is not quite right for you, or a certain app doesn’t really work – you can DO THINGS to help that. Not reinstall the system or just stare at the non-responding spinning beachball. I *do* think that presenting an overview of such solutions to potential linux users is just as important as presenting shiny desktops.
That said, for new Linux users who have started to appreciate the Linux system, I can really recommend Frugalware as well: http://www.frugalware.org . That system is blazing, has very nice package management and is very solid. I have never run a more responsive system and never managed to set up a better integrated gtk2/qt desktop experience than on Frugal.
[quote]
You gonna try a new distro? Well make a backup of your present /etc and copy and paste xorg, hotkeys, samba, user and whatever settings to quickly set up your new system. Have different configuration files for different scenarios. The possibilities are almost endless. Of course such things can be learnt later on, but many newbies do not even know about these possibilities. If a Linux system do feel sluggish, or the default GUI is not quite right for you, or a certain app doesn’t really work – you can DO THINGS to help that. Not reinstall the system or just stare at the non-responding spinning beachball. I *do* think that presenting an overview of such solutions to potential linux users is just as important as presenting shiny desktops.[/quote]
i think so too – the power and flexability doesn’t always have to come at the price of forced learning, it can be a choice.
I have tried it, but unfortunately only the Live CD as Ubuntu will not install on my systems. Other distros work fine, just Ubuntu does not install and kernel panics. On the same system that Fedora, Suse, and Mepis install, neither pure Debian or Ubuntu/Kubuntu will. Live CD runs fine though, which I find to be very peculiar.
I have tried it, but unfortunately only the Live CD
Probably an installer bug.You should better install from a regular install CD.
Live CD runs fine though,
that’s the purpose of a live cd,to test wether your system is sufficiently supported by the OS.
You might want to order some *free* cd’s for you and your frineds from:https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ 🙂
If you file a bug it’s very likely the next version will work on your system.