Two years ago, Linux guru Caitlyn Martin argued that “Ubuntu is a Poor Standard Bearer for Linux” due to reliability issues. She said that “Other distributions have problematic releases but other major distributions do not have significant problems in nearly every release. Ubuntu does.” In her follow-up piece “How Canonical Can Do Ubuntu Right: It Isn’t a Technical Problem,” she explained how “…the problem I am describing is probably rooted in policy or business decisions that have been made…” and she offered specific ideas on how Canoncial could address the situation. Are these criticisms valid today? Does Ubuntu offer good reliability? Does it deserve its mindshare as the representative of PC Linux?
If you want Ubuntu and reliability, get LTS.
Looks like they even fixed GNOME 3 Fallback mode in the next LTS:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/03/gnome-classic-in-ubuntu-12-04-it…
So you basically have a mostly working GNOME 2-like desktop if you want it.
Ironically I only ever had trouble with LTS releases of Ubuntu. If things were going to go horribly wrong it was going to be then, I could run the non LTS releases with all kinds of tweaks and 3rd party repos and have no stability issues, install 6.06, 8.04 or 10.04 and suddenly thing are acting up all over the place.
Will have to see if that happens now that I’ve moved to Mint12 for proper Mate support.
Same here although 12.04 (I,m using the beta) looks very promising. At least for me everything works and Unity is more polished and improved. At the moment HUD is a joke but don’t use it, I think in the fullness of time it might be good.
Ubuntu rocks, specially the wide range of compatible packages, its Debian roots and wide documentation.
I’m not trading it for any other distro, at least it is Ubuntu based like Mint or Pinguy.
Ubuntu is very nice in that it tries to be mainstream. No odd error messages etc.
I think it still can be improved a bit though. Even more professional.
There release engineering and testing isn’t really up to par considering the the audience they are targeting.
Also there isn’t a HCL (Hardware Compatibility) list that I could find. OpenBSD posts a full HCL as well as Oracle does for Solaris, as does Fedora.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HCL
So how I am supposed to know what is supposed to work with Ubuntu and what isn’t?
The biggest problem I always get when I try Ubuntu is that wifi works in one release and in the next it doesn’t and down the road it starts working again once they provide a patch. With Debian and Mint I never have that problem.
In recent years Ubuntu has released many versions before being tested or ready in my opinion. I’m not going to make any ridiculous claims about Ubuntu being unreliable for everyone, obviously we all have different setups. But I’ve experienced too many first-hand and second-hand regressions to give them high marks on reliability. My own conclusion is that there must be systematic causes at fault.
I still benefit tremendously from their work (as a mint user these days), but I don’t share their enthusiasm for changes of dubious merit. I’d rather they focused on making and keeping the desktop highly reliable, productive, slim and efficient. I think all the effort and resources which have gone into desktop eye candy would have been put to better use in improving applications themselves.
However I concede that the eye candy is there to attract the general public, and to the extent that it succeeds in attracting new users it will be of great benefit to the linux community. I simply don’t see any direct benefit from it.
I have been using Ubuntu at home and Windows at office. Since, gradually, I’m shifting to cloud based apps, especially Google Apps, I use it mostly for accessing the internet with the Chrome browser. The combination is definitely faster than Windows and more stable. As a Windows user it was fairly easy for me to switch to Ubuntu since it is almost as user friendly as Windows with the added benefit of security.
This kind jealous rants from esoteric users of Linux can be ignored by vast majority of users. My suggestion to the people who come up with self inflicting blows is to “add more wood behind fewer arrows” and stop the infighting. Making Linux more popular should be their greater goal.
mantrik00,
I am a linux advocate, but that doesn’t mean it should not be criticized. I certainly hope Ubuntu takes these concerns seriously and works to improve itself. We mustn’t ignore the problems if we want to make linux stronger.
I have a feeling that linux is going to have some great opportunities in the upcoming win8 saga, the last thing we need is a major linux distro giving off the appearance that it won’t listen to its users. After all, that’s likely to be a key motivation for users to leave MS behind.
Dude Linux didn’t gain when Vista was released and people HATED Vista, they just went back to XP. This time MSFT is already doing damage control by having raised the support cycle of Win 7 to 2020 for ALL versions and I have no doubt the very second an OEM balks they will be given downgrade rights, if they aren’t all given downgrade rights at release time. MSFT learned with netbooks better to have them using your older cheaper OS than not using your product at all, and within 5 months Windows went from nothing to 90% on netbooks.
For Linux to actually have a shot at the masses then “free as in beer” simply has to die because linux has a serious “busted toilets” problem that the GPL just can’t fix. you see to be a truly world class OS, one that can stand head to head with Windows and OSX, then there are a TON of really nasty thankless jobs that have to be done. most of the docs have to be thrown out and rewritten because as it is now you have a list of CLI commands with ZERO explanation if you are lucky, if not you have a “to do” placeholder. QA, regression testing, replacing the driver model so that what works in ubuntu Leapin Lizard doesn’t puke and die in ubuntu Maniac Monkey, etc.
What nobody in the FOSS world seems to understand is human nature. Ask someone to write you a song, paint you a picture? You can get someone to do that for free because humans like to create, its enjoyable to us. now ask them to come clean that nasty overflowing toilet and watch as the job don’t get done. When it comes to building an OS for every fun job you have 1000 that are about as pleasant as being the guy that cleans the puke at the Chuck E Cheese. Apple and MSFT pay hundreds of millions to get the toilets fixed, FOSS pays nothing so the toilets simply never get repaired, its just human nature.
bassbeast,
I’ve never been one to claim a mass migration to linux would be quick, easy, or painless. So I think your “Dude” comment to me is misdirected.
Like you, I also see normal people becoming disenchanted with microsoft, but as you say, human nature is to stick with what we are already familiar with and it is difficult to change those habits. So it’s true this impedes linux adoption.
Also, it’s still far too difficult for average consumers to purchase a system that’s not bundled with a windows license. I don’t care if we blame MS coercive monopoly power or not, but either way the lack of alternate operating systems on store shelves is an impediment to OS competition. Consumers have a tradition of going to stores to try before buying – even for online purchases.
You explicitly mentioned the netbook. I know someone who was looking for one this past year and low and behold all the local computer stores sold only windows devices. Clearly this exposure puts windows at a huge advantage even before a buyer sets hand on a keyboard. So again, this impedes linux adoption.
However despite all these impediments, what I was trying to say in my last post is that win8 might end up being even more foreign to users than linux desktops. Also, the exclusive metro-app store might give retail stores a huge reason to reconsider their relationship with microsoft. If they predict metro will kill retail software sales, as it likely will, they’d be wise to start shifting their eggs around.
Believe me, I am under no delusion that it’s easy to displace entrenched market players who hold all the cards, but these are still some excellent opportunities in my opinion. Just be realistic about expectations: If linux has 1% desktop share today, and 1.5% next year, a 50% growth in market share for one year is huge news.
Indeeeed, they should explore that large untapped market: Linux retail software sales, right?
rjamorim,
“Indeeeed, they should explore that large untapped market: Linux retail software sales, right?”
I realize you couldn’t resist the urge to use sarcasm, but in fairness I explicitly placed the figure at around 1%, I never said it was a “large market”.
I do happen to think the linux market for commercial software is largely untapped. Even for myself I buy -windows- tax software to do my own taxes since I cannot find any well maintained linux equivalent for my state to do the same thing. Annoyingly the software doesn’t even work under wine. I would happily buy a linux version or better yet open source version if I could.
What we have is a catch-22, where virtually 100% of the tax accounting firms target the 97% of the market who predominantly use windows and neglect the remaining 3% because they’re too insigificant to care about (figures are illustrative only). It’s a strong negative reinforcing cycle.
And I think the untapped market goes well beyond tax software. I spent money on a few turnkey video editing hardware/software packages for windows because I couldn’t find what I needed for linux. This is untapped commercial potential.
So, yes there are definitely opportunities, but the key is cracking down the barriers to entry and getting those products in front of actual customers. The metro app store, with it’s exclusive distribution model and 30% fees, is going to make metro users much less profitable to vendors. More opportunistic business leaders will want to cater towards the smaller yet more profitable alternative OS crowd. So I do expect linux to see decent growth. Whether it reaches critical mass or not remains to be seen, but all I can say is that would be nice to finally see microsoft forced to compete on merit instead of abusing it’s monopoly power.
You said it yourself, that remaining 3% is too insignificant. When there just isn’t enough money in it, there just isn’t enough money in it.
First, because an untapped market may technically exist, it doesn’t mean there’s any real profit potential there. By comparison, why would a company invest their resources into something with an extremely limited pool of customers rather than the much much much larger pool? Linux itself is a terrible platform in many ways when providing commercial products.
There’s a reason why Linux has never gotten its feet under itself as even a remotely serious desktop OS contender. This exact conversation has been had a million times before and will be had a million more times… And in the end, Linux will still struggle & flounder as a desktop OS.
ilovebeer,
“First, because an untapped market may technically exist, it doesn’t mean there’s any real profit potential there.”
To reword that into something I’m more comfortable with: there’s real profit potential, but not necessarily any real profit.
“By comparison, why would a company invest their resources into something with an extremely limited pool of customers rather than the much much much larger pool?”
Not having a concrete example to work with, I cannot say anything too meaningful. But here are some plausible reasons:
For one, there’s less competition for commercial products on linux than on windows. So the net profit and effort to capture 1/100th of the a windows market, or 70/100ths of a linux market may not be so different.
For another, vendors may calculate that in the long term, they’d be more profitable investing in linux now than in a locked in platform where they know sales are going to be subject to heavy fee structures.
Thirdly, it may be better to invest in the linux market today when it’s small rather than try being a “me-too” vendor playing catch up. (if one believes linux is going to grow)
“Linux itself is a terrible platform in many ways when providing commercial products.”
Is this technical? Would you clarify what you mean?
70/100ths of a handful of potential customers doesn’t add up to much. There’s a reason why companies don’t pursue a linux-based revenue stream. It’s not because of some Microsoft conspiracy that linux-huggers want to believe in, it’s that linux looks extremely poor as an investment platform.
There isn’t a single shred of evidence in the history of linux that could lead you to that conclusion. There’s nothing wrong with wishful thinking, as long as you acknowledge it as such.
Linux isn’t anything new. Even when the Windows world take big missteps, such as with Vista, linux doesn’t gain any ground. The idea that linux will ever be a serious desktop OS contender to Windows is beyond wishful thinking.
If you’re so convinced that linux has a promising future ahead of it, why not start a company and invest in it yourself? Nobody else is doing it so it’s yours for the taking. Just be prepared to be broke.
The same things that make linux attractive, make it unattractive as well — its constant state of change, frequent breakage, too many distros with too much variance between them (dir structures, packaging systems, etc), multiple desktops (which one do you choose?), and so on and so on..
Linux is too much of a moving target. Investing in commercial linux software is no small undertaking and after all the headaches, you’re still left with just a sliver of the potential customer pool you’d have with Windows.
“70/100ths of a handful of potential customers doesn’t add up to much.”
I’m not sure if you understood what I was trying to say. A large fraction of a small market may end up being as large as a tiny fraction of a larger market. Using the previous totally fictitious numbers:
97% * 1/100 = 0.97% — windows
3% * 70/100 = 2.1% — other os
The numbers are useless because they’re made up, but mathematically my point is valid.
“There isn’t a single shred of evidence in the history of linux that could lead you to that conclusion. There’s nothing wrong with wishful thinking, as long as you acknowledge it as such.”
What? I wasn’t talking about guaranteed sales, I was talking about the cost of overhead per sale between the markets, and the 30% fee being introduced on metro app sales is a huge cost which isn’t shared by linux sales. Or is 30% insignificant?
“Linux isn’t anything new. Even when the Windows world take big missteps, such as with Vista, linux doesn’t gain any ground.”
I think linux is gaining ground on the desktop.
http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/02/28/linux-is-the-worlds-fastest-gro…
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/01/windows-7-growing-fas…
“Between November and December 2009, Windows market share dropped 0.31 percentage points (from 92.52 percent to 92.21 percent), Mac OS dipped 0.01 percentage points (from 5.12 percent to 5.11 percent), and Linux edged forward 0.02 percentage points (from 1.00 percent to 1.02 percent).”
Feel free to supply your own sources if you want to disagree. But bear in mind that I’m not claiming it’ll be easy, I’m not claiming it’ll be for everyone, hell I’m not even claiming it’ll be for most people. I was just giving some plausible answers to the question you posed about linux opportunists: “…why would a company invest their resources into something with an extremely limited pool of customers rather than the much much much larger pool?”
So while you’ll no doubt continue lambasting everything linux stands for, there are others who are defecting from windows for any number of reasons and those are the ones who are driving linux growth whether you agree with their judgment or not.
I understood you just fine, I think it’s you that doesn’t get it. What’s the larger number, 2.1% of 1,000,000 or .97% of 100,000,000?
Anything that affects cost should be considered. What you keep ignoring is the vast different in size between a potential customer pool of Windows users and linux users. With linux your potential customer pool is severely limited by comparison. With linux your potential exposure is severely limited by comparison. With linux you’ve got a whole number of development issues that simply don’t exist on the Windows platform. In other words, you can deduce that there’s a lot more work involved in developing and maintaining a piece of software for linux. That’s more than mere opinion, I hear it all the time from people who develop across multiple platforms, linux included.
Growth is best perceived when the numbers are small. If 1 person uses linux today and 2 people use it tomorrow you can say that’s a 50% growth. Now 50% growth sounds pretty amazing but when you put the numbers into perspective, it’s far less impressive.
I was looking for tangible responses, not whatever random thoughts came to mind.
I couldn’t care less what OS people use and why. I’m not invested in the propaganda that is mission statements either. I’m a daily user of both Windows and linux, but am a cheerleader for neither. My opinions on linux in certain use cases shouldn’t hurt your feelings the way they seem to.
Btw, why did you completely ignore the part of my post that discussed just some of the problems making commercial linux software has to deal with?
ilovebeer,
As usual your just interested in trolling. It’s childish and pathetic and you know it too. Go ahead and have the last word, I’m outta here.
Grow up.
Sorry at no point was he trolling. He disagreed with you and you didn’t like that fact that he was correct.
Embedded Linux is a success … Desktop Linux is a failure. Get over it.
lucas_maximus,
“Sorry at no point was he trolling. He disagreed with you and you didn’t like that fact that he was correct.”
Except that neither of you genuinely contradicted the merit of the points I was making, which were very reasonable answers to the question (“why would a company invest their resources…”). You don’t have to agree to the points yourself to admit that another reasonable person might find the points valid. I see things in multiple dimensions, linux and windows each have both good and bad qualities, but the unrelenting bias against one or the other collapses the entire conversation into a single dimension where X is the incarnation of everything which is bad and therefor all the points of anyone promoting X must be wrong, even if they aren’t really wrong.
The behavior driven by extreme dogmatic viewpoints sucks the life out of otherwise fun, interesting & lighthearted commentary. This is osnews, we should be able to discuss our OS interests without being flamed. Why are operating systems so religious anyway?
Edited 2012-04-04 20:43 UTC
Unfortunately – for Linux – bassbeast is mostly right. Albeit with one evil twist: there actually *are* volunteers for the toilets! Only that as a reward, they tend to build even more toilets, aka packaging systems & distros & repositories…
Don’t get me wrong, I do wish Linux was more popular, but I prefer that to happen by adoption due to technical merits like reliability, stability and speed, not just by being a system that’s about as good as others, only cheaper.
I do think Ubuntu has a problem in terms of reliability, or at least it does now. I’ve been watching (and sporadically using it) since version 4.10, and in the first two years or so, each release was mostly “better” than the other one — in that things that didn’t work in a previous version worked in the new one, and none of the things that worked in the previous one were broken.
This really isn’t the case anymore, and unfortunately some of the bugs that slip in are very disturbing. The latest no-sound bug (which basically resulted in the system becoming entirely mute, at random) is like we’re back to the early versions of aRts.
What I do like about them is that they are actually very keen on innovating. Even Unity is a good thing — I don’t use it (it’s like a poor clone of WindowMaker to me) but it’s one of the first Linux desktop projects in a long time that actually tried to explore some new UI solutions. What is definitely wrong about it is that, while being in testing, is pushed as the Ubuntu desktop.
IMO, I think they need a model where they can provide stable distributions that don’t break anything from the previous one, while still having good vehicles for testing. Perhaps something like Debian’s model would begin to work better now.
Being a motorcyclist, I’m not allowed to dislike anything originating from the Isle of Man.
Having said that, I don’t use it myself. It’s great for first-time Linux users, provided their hardware isn’t too old and/or exotic.
I have used some of the most mundane Ubuntu releases in the most mundane ways, and they’ve each broken in some way. I fear the dreaded upgrade from an older version to a newer one. I especially fear doing that with any other distro which would probably foul up even worse!
No kidding…when you install or upgrade any distro; you better have Google fired up somewhere because you never know what might happen. I haven’t used Windows since 2000 (accept at work). All those years have taught me one thing, any Linux distro upgrade can keep you awake for hours on Google trying to figure out what the f— happened. I am never shocked or surprised. I am just prepared.
Since when is she a guru? On the other hand, these days “guru” seems to mostly mean “clueless schmuck who stopped working in the field too long ago” so maybe she is.
No she didn’t. Other than vague things like “improve QA” and “promote LTS more” this article fails miserable in this department. It’s basically “Ubuntu does some…stuff…wrong and they should so some…other…stuff…differently” without ever specifying what that stuff is. Zero solutions are provided.
Yes.
Yes? No? I can honestly say that I don’t care.
Ubuntu does not offer good reliability. Whether the woman is a guru or not … it is a bit of a joke that it is known to break between OS updates.
If I am using a Linux distro it is either SuSE or Redhat Based because they actually seem to give a fuck about stuff actually working before they push it out.
Yeah don’t you have to pay for Red Hat and SuSe? So, I hope your updates work.
That’s once every 6 months, if even that. It’s not a reliability problem. For the record, I’ve never had any major problems upgrading between releases in Kubuntu.
Lucky you.
Most people have problems with Wireless breaking … Linux works fine if you have an intel chipset (including graphics) connected to the network with ethernet.
Good for you. Stuff breaking between updates is the reason I switched to Fedora.
You’re right, it’s not a reliability problem. It’s a release engineering problem, and it’s something Canonical is not particularly good at.
Thanks for putting it better than I could.
“No she didn’t. Other than vague things like “improve QA” and “promote LTS more” this article fails miserable in this department. It’s basically “Ubuntu does some…stuff…wrong and they should so some…other…stuff…differently” without ever specifying what that stuff is. Zero solutions are provided. ”
This. This, a hundred times.
It’s kind of sad how many articles of exactly this type seem to get churned out on a daily basis by the tech press. It seems like every day some journalist wakes up, finds a bug, and decides to parlay it into a spectacularly poorly-argued article along the lines of ‘Firefox crashed on me, so I conclude that Mark Shuttleworth is evil and the solution is for everyone to run Google Windows! Also, desktop Linux needs more applications!’ The sad part is, I’m barely even exaggerating…
I used to read almost every article in my RSS feed (OS News, Linux Today, Slashdot, The Reg, Tuxmachines). These days I barely get through the headlines of most of them before they hit the garbage pile.
I think the old saying needs updating – those who can, do. Those who can’t, write articles complaining about those who can…
For years, Ubuntu was the darling of the tech press and could do no wrong. These days it seems like they can’t feed a starving orphan without fifty articles being written about how it’s really just part of Dark Lord Shuttleworth’s nefarious plans for humanity. Did Ubuntu change that much or is the change more on the other side?
Maybe it is to do with the marketing?
To me they sell themselves as the Apple of the Linux world … their GUI interface (unity) resembles it very much so (at least in looks alone).
from ubuntu’s home page
Some might argue that if they are claiming so much, then they should should be judged more critically.
So if we all don’t get master’s degrees and write our own OSes we should take broken messes, is this correct? old Joe Rogan joke “If I give you a sandwich that is 95% sh*t, and 5% ham, would you call it a ham sandwich?”
Want specifics on what needs fixed? As a retailer i’ll be happy to give one of them to you 1.-Here is a list of hardware that must not ever break, if it does, no excuses as we do NOT want to hear them, then you have failed: Realtek sound, SiS NIC, Sigmatel Sound, Via HD Audio, all AMD/Nvidia/Intel chips that are over a year old. This is the list of hardware that is in over 90% of PCs out there so if it breaks you have broken more machines than you can even imagine. as a retailer I can tell you just ONE broken driver can cost me more than a copy of Windows Home, so having any of this bog standard hardware break? inexcusable.
I could list a good half a dozen more that makes Linux look like amateur hour to retailers but then this post would be the size of War & Peace, but its bog standard stuff getting broken that right off the bat makes Linux look like a hobbyist geeker toy and not a serious OS. We don’t care about the excuses, don’t care that if we would waste our time Googling fixes that we might get it to work after a couple of hours, heck you can’t even roll back drivers or have a simple app to find drivers when none are present, its sloppy and looks bad. Just because you give something for free is NO excuse. i can get “free’ broken chairs all day long from the local dumpster, does that make them valuable?
bassbeast,
“As a retailer… Here is a list of hardware that must not ever break, if it does, no excuses as we do NOT want to hear them, then you have failed: Realtek sound, SiS NIC, Sigmatel Sound, Via HD Audio, all AMD/Nvidia/Intel chips that are over a year old. This is the list of hardware that is in over 90% of PCs out there so if it breaks you have broken more machines than you can even imagine.”
You pick up hardware from your suppliers without any commercial linux support, then go download a consumer distro ISO freely from the web with no warranty or support, and then turn around and resell the system to your customers, and after all that you’re not willing to support them yourself when something stops working?
Couple things to say here: as a retailer, if your not purchasing linux support from elsewhere, then the onus is technically on *you* to make the assurances that the hardware you sell is compatible with the OS you bundle. If you are not technically able to support the OS/hardware yourself, then you really should be purchasing corporate support from a vendor who can, like red hat.
Maybe you’d rather not purchase support and at the same time you’d rather not provide support yourself? Well in that case maybe you need to tell your users that you will sell linux systems like they want, but won’t provide support for it.
Even MS avoids making the kinds of guaranties your asking of Linux distros. I’m not going to make excuses for poor Q/A practices, but if you want guaranties about linux support, you need to be pressuring your hardware vendors to provide it. If they won’t then you need to look for alternatives who will. If enough resellers like you start to demand official linux support, eventually they’ll all agree to provide it and linux devs will no longer have to reverse engineer windows drivers to achieve compatibility, which would be a win for everyone.
Edited 2012-04-02 03:17 UTC
You sir just failed…did you catch it? Here i’ll highlight it…without any commercial linux support You see you have just failed right there because the only commercially supported linux hardware is in workstations which cost MORE than Windows by a long shot. so why should I use your product?
Sell it to me, i’m your customer, give me a reason. Its not price, Windows Home is $89 and one driver hunt will make that seems cheap, its not ‘free as in freedom’ because honestly? we don’t care, we really don’t. if we cared we wouldn’t be buying ipads and iphones now would we?
You see THIS, this right here, is why Linux is doomed to be dead last on the desktop. in its current form there simply is NO selling point. All you get when you point out problems is either excuses or “answers” that cost more than Windows. To use a car analogy linux is like that 74 dodge sitting in a field. if you spend you weekends tweaking and fiddling, learn all about its guts and design, then you can make it into a nice car, a hot rod even. but the masses aren’t gonna waste their time doing this, they won’t. so they buy a nice new car where everything “just works”.
But go ahead, sell it to me, give me a single reason why your OS is better than Windows, not from a religious or philosophical standpoint, but something that Joe the plumber would actually care about, or something that would make a retailer like me care.
bassbeast,
“You sir just failed…did you catch it? Here i’ll highlight it…without any commercial linux support”
It’s completely unrealistic to expect any of the free distro’s we’re talking about to pay for and provide fail-proof support on behalf of 3rd party hardware vendors. It’s absolutely preposterous.
Who pays for windows hardware certification? You guessed it, it’s the hardware vendors themselves. Furthermore, microsoft’s HCL certification requires that the *hardware vendor* commits to provide end user support. Microsoft will update the drivers in windows update, but it’s responsibility ends there.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh852370
“With certification comes a commitment to the end user of product support for the reasonable lifetime of the product. The Windows Certification Program provides services to make this commitment possible through access to field telemetry and the ability to certify driver fixes and deliver them to end users.”
So, in order to come in line with your expectations, a linux distro would have to pay out of their own funds to certify and support 3rd party hardware. Keep in mind that microsoft doesn’t even provide this level of support itself. Truth be told, linux compatibility *as is* is usually even better than windows out of the box, which is pretty damned impressive. But if you want commercial grade support and certification, you’re going to have to pay for it one way or another.
But man you really top the cake when you expect a linux distro to provide commercial 3rd party hardware support to *your customers*.
Like I said before, the solution to this is for people/retailers like you to demand linux support from vendors. However from the tone of the rest of your post I get the distinct impression that you don’t even care about linux support, you are just trying to justify your decision to be a windows user. That’s really not necessary, your preference for windows doesn’t bother me at all.
Linux is not ready to take over microsoft’s lion’s share of the desktop, I never claimed it was. In particular it’s missing alot of commercial software that businesses use. But I do think it’s ready to take over several more percent. And with increased interest from vendors, that will serve to help improve linux even further.
Edited 2012-04-03 05:50 UTC
I am sorry this is simply not true.
There maybe more devices support however most aren’t operating optimally.
If hardware doesn’t work in Linux you are dropped to the command line to fix things, putting in strange codes, and that is only if I am lucky enough to have network access … without network access you are needing two PCs with a usb stick … it isn’t fun.
Recently with Windows 7 I just picked up a 3rd party wireless … the PC hadn’t been on the internet for months (I have recently Emmigrated to Gibraltar), I didn’t even put in the CD … it detected it and within 20 seconds I had wireless.
You make it sound as if Linux breaks using the hardware you listed. Now, this is truly puzzling because I have covered most of the stuff you listed installing Ubuntu and … zilch problems.
I even had XP “identify” and install a sound driver that did not work. Booting up with the Ubuntu live CD produced sound.
However, the owner of the PC insisted on an install of XP, so the Ubuntu live CD came to the rescue once again. Installing (installing!) sysinfo after booting up with the live CD showed the correct sound driver which I downloaded while still in the live CD environment, rebooted into XP, removed the XP-suggested driver, installed the new one and … presto, sound!
A year later, this said user once again called for help re:XP and this time he said:”Remove it and install Linux Mint for me.” That was two years ago. No calls for help till now.
On what empirical evidence do you base your implied claim of Linux drivers that break on your list of hardware on “over 90% of PCs out there”?
Claim what you like. The fact is – for me, at least – Ubuntu has been more reliable, more stable and more compatible. I have installed, and still using, Ubuntu on computing devices that include 3 different brands of netbooks, several notebooks (belonging to friends), PCs with single-core Athlons, Celerons, Pentiums, several quad-core PCs with different display cards, with different chipsets, with NO problems to this day.
These users have had XP die on them two or three times without Ubuntu once failing. One by one, they have abandoned booting into XP except to play Windows games. For one user, he finally got so fed up with XP, he also gave up playing Windows games.
Yes because the latest version of Windows is Windows XP.
Windows 7 I have had installed on this PC since RTM, I have even replaced the motherboard with one of a different chipset, first boot wasn’t pretty and slow .. but it came up, downloaded and installed the drivers and I was up and running within Minutes.
(answer to the article’s question): Yes, it is .
-Releases that break stuff like wifi or sound every six months, even if the computer is Ubuntu-certified? Check. (i never understood why they certify laptops that don’t have all-open source drivers anyway, given Linux’s unstable ABI)
-Having two versions at the time (the current and the LTS) that both get promoted as ready for public consumption, confusing users and developers? Check.
-Breaking binary (and sometimes source) compatibility with existing apps every six months, like when they bundled PulseAudio and broke compatibility even with open source apps like VLC? Check. (it’s binary compatibility breakages that make proprietary vendors like Pinnacle and Adobe not wanting to touch Ubuntu and friends with a 10 foot pole)
Find a distro that doesn’t have any of the problems above, and feel the entire internet patting you on the back.
PS: Yes i know Windows breaks back compat sometimes (driver and apps), but it does it every six years, not every six months. And yes I know there is the LTS, but the LTS breaks back compat too, and the majority people go for the latest and greatest (current) antway. And even in the case of LTS, backwards compatibility breakages every 2 years are still unacceptable.
Edited 2012-03-31 12:21 UTC
Opps, stop right there, have you gone to LKML to complain for that unstable ABI?
I hope you do before barking this type of ignorance in the public.
My apology… Just ignore this comment.
Seriously shutup about this unstable ABI being okay.
It is bullshit. Every code change you make can introduce bugs … so chopping and changing the Interface (btw interfaces aren’t supposed to just randomly change) will introduce bugs and it shows.
An Interface is supposed to obscure what is happening behind it … this is like OOP programming 101.
BTW, this is why people keep buying Windows, despite the fact it ships with only two good bundled apps (Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center). It’s because it provides a stable platform to run third party apps on, at least for six years. Microsoft doesn’t care if users hate MS Paint or Windows Movie Maker. They know you will buy Windows because of the third party apps you can run on it (Pinnacle Studio, Photoshop etc). Even open source stuff like VLC or Firefox runs better on Windows, because there aren’t any the PulseAudio and X.org hardware accelaration pains.
Same for OS X. People buy it (and even moved from Windows for it, so much for “Microsoft has the market locked in”) because it provides a stable platform to run apps on. But unlike Windows, it also ships with good bundled apps.
Now add to the fact MS and Apple make good SDKs that entice proprietary devs to code for their platform, and none of those devs touches Linux.
Edited 2012-03-31 12:40 UTC
Actually its 10 years now, Microsoft recently changed their policies and now the home releases get the same length of support as the business releases, which is 10 years. That means Vista is good until 2017, Windows 7 good until 2020, and if Win 8 is released in Oct it’ll be good until 2022. With support cycles THAT long people will have retired the machine long before Windows runs out of support.
Man it would be awesome if you could get a Linux distro with that kind of support, but until Torvalds quits fiddling with the kernel I just doubt you’ll ever see support cycles that long.
Get Redhat Linux Desktop and you will get 10 years of support. Do not expect that from your average Linux distro.
Which will cost you $4000! See why Linux doesn’t work on the desktop? To get the same amount of support i get with an $89 copy of Windows home will cost me $400 a year or $4000, and for what? what advantage does paying TEN TIMES the amount of even the most expensive Windows get me?
I use Fedora 16 KDE and it is by far the most reliable Linux OS I’ve used. OpenSUSE is also excellent. I never had as much luck with Ubuntu. I actually prefer deb/apt to rpm/yum but unfortunately the best distros are all rpm based.
I test almost all of the major Linux distros on a regular basis and, while I agree Ubuntu has some problems in every release, it typically has fewer problems than other distributions. All operating systems have bugs, every release of every OS has bugs. However, Ubuntu manages to have relatively few and provides more features and reliability (at least in their LTS and Server editions) than other distributions. The Ubuntu family (I’m including Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Mint) are the only distributions I feel comfortable recommending to newcomers these days.
That’s like saying an ubuntu-turd doesn’t smell as bad as another turd. There’s no good excuse why the things that break in ubuntu “upgrades”, break. It’s just sloppy and careless management.
I always keep a Linux PC around, for the last few years it has run Ubuntu.
My problem with Ubuntu is that dist upgrades always go wrong. Stuff stops working, the package system breaks and on one occasion the entire GUI failed to start. Even though I stick to installing stuff from the Ubuntu software tool.
For some reason the audio system mixed up the speaker and mic volume settings, but after a few versions this got fixed. Shutting down the computer used to work, then it just froze the PC, again for a few versions and now it also works again.
Ah, and I was able to have these freaky video effects, but now it says my video card doesn’t support it (while it did in the past).
Sometimes Ubuntu is like a box of chocolates I guess.
Use Debian. It’s rock solid. Ubuntu has lots of shine, but is too bleeding edge, too focused on reinventing stuff. I recommend Debian to all my friends when they eventually get frustrated with Ubuntu’s crankiness.
Debian is also breaking heavily, even when using testing. Also take into account that ubuntu has much more sane packaging policy and actually give or take has most media codecs/flash/etc. included, so you don’t waste time. If i need server like stability i would use server grade software, but not including such basic things like lcdfilter is for me total bs.
Edited 2012-04-01 01:13 UTC
Testing is not supposed to be stable. Testing is Testing, and it breaks quite often. That’s why it is called Testing. It is where the next version of Stable is tested.
The Stable release is where Debian shines. I tend to install stable as a base, and then use Backports and Debian-Multimedia to get a more up to date graphical environment. It gives me the stability I need, with the features I want. If I build a server, it’s all stable.
Stable hardly ever breaks, and it makes Ubuntu look like alpha software in comparison.
Debian doesn’t install non-free software by default, and that is a choice that they make, but it is available. I’ll take that hassle of installing codecs and the like over having to screw with graphics drivers every time I receive a kernel update.
Edited 2012-04-01 03:10 UTC
Ubuntu. I used it. However I found out that the name no longer means for human beings. It’s just only its creator’s toy, perhaps a space toy panel bar now. How can it be for human beings if one can’t stand Unity.
Use a different distro or different wm, dm or whatever. I use Bodhi. Pretty Simple.
Unity is fine. You just don’t like it. And that is fine too.
Edited 2012-04-01 00:23 UTC
I prefer Windows.
Nothing wrong with using Windows. I just prefer Linux. Trouble now is if someone asks me to help with Windows I have a hard time helping them.
I have been using Linux as my desktop since January 2000. I have used many a distro. In the last few years I am amazed at all the Ubuntu and Canonical bashing. It really is bashing not just constructive criticism. It is really pathetic and makes the Linux world look terrible.
Ubuntu is a good distro, plain and simple. It works perfect 98% of the time just like all the other major distros out there. It is easy to install, devices work 98% of the time, and most importantly it is always evolving. Good or bad.
Ubuntu upgrades have been a pain at times for me. But so have other distributions as well. Just a nature of the beast with Linux. Sometimes wireless doesn’t work out of the box and other crap like that. I fire up Google look up how to fix it. Half the time that doesn’t work right away, so I gotta keep digging. Again nature of the beast with Linux.
It has gotta a lot better since 2000. First distro I bought; yes bought; Mandrake 6 or something. A box set at Target or Walmart. Then got an issue of Maximum Linux. Mandrake 7 something came with it. Then bought a box set SuSe, I can’t remember. I think at Best Buy. Mandrake and Suse paved the way for user friendly installs and desktop for Linux. But they were a pain in the azz too!
In 2005 got a copy of Ubuntu what ever. It worked great. Even learned to install Debian from it. Well, I learned I could install Debian over the net with floppy disk. I didn’t have a CD burner. I use Bodhi now.
Anyways what I am trying to say is all Linux distro f-up from time to time. In fact, they f-up a lot of the time. Again nature of the beast with Linux.
Considering all the problems people have/have had with ubuntu, I’m not surprised at all. Like it or not, the bashing has been earned, plain & simple.
What pathetic is not the fact that people express their views on their bad experiences, it’s that some try to make excuses for ubuntu while trying to disregard others actual first-hand experiences.
Also, people don’t make linux look bad, linux makes itself look bad. A rock-solid product can always stand on it’s own two feet, regarding of whatever bashing some users do.
It’s easy to make numbers up and pretend everything is fine because it’s been fine for you, for the most part. But, reality disagrees — hence all the complaints.
I see no point in comparing ubuntu against other distros when you’re having a conversation about ubuntu itself, and the problems it’s riddled with. What it is or is not compared to some other distro has absolutely nothing to do with what ubuntu is or is not itself. These comparisons are just a cheap way to point out how it’s less crap that something else.
You went from saying it works 98% of the time on 98% of all hardware, to acknowledging linux in general f’s up “a lot of the time”. That kind of says it all right there.
I do agree with another users post however where he recommended people use Debian if they want stability. Debian, for me, has been the most stable of the distros I’ve tried.
I feel Ubuntu gets more negative press than other distros because many people do not like Canonical or Shuttleworth. Ubuntu is stable. It is reliable; except wireless issues from time to time; but distros in general have a difficult time with wireless cards, graphics cards. The vibe I get is users do not like the direction Canonical is taking Ubuntu. So, we begin to see more negative press about Ubuntu. I feel it has been getting very nasty. Just my opinion.
I can compare Ubuntu to other distros because the question is “Ubuntu a poor standard bearer for Linux?” How else could you say it is or is not? Compare it to Windows, BSDs or OS X? You can only compare it do other distros.
98% is no worse than saying: every time users do an Ubuntu update it breaks; Ubuntu never works with my hardware; I switched to Fedora/Mint because it always works.
Walk down memory lane…I am proud that I have stuck with Linux from 2000 on and have never used Windows accept at work…what’s wrong with that? I have seen a lot of progress with Linux Distros. Unless you were looking back at the crazy install fests, LUG meetings and floppy disk install.
You are correct Debian is very stable; it is meant to be. It can take years before a new stable release of Debian comes out.
I like Ubuntu. It works for me and what I need to do. If an issue comes up I can fix it.
I love Linux, and I want to see them all succeed. I can put up with a few issues from time to time. Because I love Linux. I don’t care if a distro is owned by a company, community developed, or a one person show. But I sincerely feel Ubuntu gets more negative press now because people do not like Canonical or Shuttleworth. I do not have the ability to debate like a professional so I my initial comment and my rebuttal to your rebuttals might suck but oh well.
I like the way this person said it better “All of them”
Edited 2012-04-02 20:39 UTC
In those areas and you are part of a business. Shouldn’t you be purchasing the services contracts, certified hardware and so forth. And holding Canonical accountable in that way.
If you are running Ubuntu at a business and your desktops and servers f-up because of an upgrade and your not using the support contracts or certified hardware; and you b—- about Ubuntu/Canonical. It doesn’t hurt them. But if you have agreements and their software f/up. You can take your money else where. That might make them listen a bit more.
…It has a long, long way to go before it matches Windows as desktop. However, I use Debian and CentOS a great deal in server environments and for that it is perfectly suited.
The last time I tried a migration from Windows to Ubuntu, I made a list of things that frustrated the hell out of me (too long to list here.)
But I think the problems are NOT unique to Ubuntu. I guess I could be a better FOSS advocate and provide some constructive feedback, but my motivation has been rather low to do this when Windows is still a rather excellent environment (even to run freeware/open source apps/games.)
Let’s see if Windows 8 changes this…
I bought a new netbook recently and decided to see whether I could find a Linux distro that would run better than the Windows XP that came with it.
First I tried Linux Mint because I don’t really care for Unity. I don’t know why, but it wouldn’t detect the alps touchpad as a touchpad, just a mouse, and the fonts were almost unreadable in parts of the UI. It wasn’t bad but I wanted to see if there was a better one.
Fedora was next because I had read that the touchpad was an Ubuntu problem. Sure enough the touchpad worked in Fedora, but I was stuck with the open source video drivers, and no wireless driver. After googling and finding lots of command line instructions I finally found a simple solution that simply involved adding the fusion repositories and installing drivers from there. I don’t know why this wasn’t the top result, it would have saved me an hour or two. So Fedora worked quite nicely until I wanted to add more software. The Software repositry for Fedora is a mess, offering far too many technical packages that I will never need for every search I did. For instance, I think I searched for tweak tool, and it brought up every package with the word tool in it. Absolute rubbish.
Linux Mint KDE next because I think the fonts in it are nicer than the Gnome version and it’s quite easy to move from Windows to KDE. I don’t know why the KDE version failed where the Gnome version worked, but it wouldn’t install the wireless drivers or the nvidia drivers. Pants.
Lastly I thought, I’ll use Ubuntu and replace Unity with Gnome 3. Ubuntu installed the proprietary drivers during the installation (after I ticked a box) and Gnome3 just required a reboot. The fonts work. The touchpad didn’t work but I found a fix that involved editing a config file and that was that. The Software Centre is a doddle to use, having reviews, screenshots and categories. It generally puts the package I’m looking for at the top of the results.
In short, ubuntu gives me much less hassle than other distros. I think some people forget the efforts they make in ease of use.
Maybe I’m asking for too much but why is it almost next to impossible to find a distribution that simple compiles, without additional patches, bog standard tar balls downloaded off the respective project websites? why are distributions almost hell bent on customising the software up the wazoo to the point that it resembles very little of the original untainted version? the biggest issue I find is that the software becomes so tainted that even if you want community support you more than often find that the project maintainers end up telling you that it was the distro that broke the application rather than the application itself being at fault.
Many of the comments here miss Ms. Martin’s main point. It’s not that Ubuntu breaks or is bad, but that it could be way better if different decisions were made at the top. Canonical needs to prioritize differently, placing reliability and bug fixes above coming out with radically new features in every release (at the potential cost of quality of product).
Does Ubuntu offer good reliability?
No, but I don’t think Ubuntu has ever strived for such. I think Mark Space traveler(Couldn’t think of his surname) tries to push the envelope and force linux into a certain paradigm, into his own vision.
Obviously this leads to a few hiccups. The reason why I don’t use it.
Of course it does. It represents what Linux is all about. The ability for anyone to take what tools the community have created and forge a new tool from them.
It might not be what you want or expect and no one is forcing you to agree with Mark’s or Ubuntu’s philosophy, but it stands as another chapter in Linux’s history. One that shows that anyone with the balls
can blow huge wads of cash to try and shape Linux into their own vision.
The problem is, I don’t think people that try to do that really understand what Linux is all about, but that doesn’t mean we need to constantly question these people for their actions. Let them be to pursue whatever their dream is and if you sort of agree with them, share your thoughts and help them achieve what you think it is they want. They’ll soon tell you if you’re not in their frame of mind. You can then look for another distro to help out or start your own. Ain’t the GPL a wonderful thing?!
Well said my friend. I think you hit it on the mark. I have felt for a long time that the increased Ubuntu bad press because users do not like/understand Canonical and Shuttleworth. Maybe that is not what you meant, but that is how I understood it.
I used to like Ubuntu okay, but stability between upgrades has always been problematic and I run it on vmware so there is no excuse.. For me it isn’t drivers, it is annoying library upgrades and packages I depend on when compiling being marked broken and removed or upgraded.. Now I run Debian 6 headless, works well enough for crosscompiling using gcc which is all I need Linux for anyhow and using Linux via ssh and putty is a consistent and good experience which requires no upgrades, very easy to tweak.. For me there is no compelling use story for using Linux on the desktop though I keep trying it to see what I am missing.. Apparently what I am missing is frustration and I can live without that..
I think the negative press ubuntu gets is a result of what ubuntu has become, not peoples person feelings, opinions, or otherwise about Canonical/Shuttleworth. People aren’t that invested, they simply install ubuntu and come to their conclusions based on how well/poorly it works for them.