On 09/05/10 18:52, Eddie wrote:
I have tried to use linux as a desktop and back out. It just seemed
to me that everything that can be done w/ windows w/ a few clicks
needed extreme effort to work around in linux.
ie. All my friends uses msn messenger, then I would use pidgin, but
then I can use webcam
And then setting up webcam on linux is another story.
The webcam is nowadays hardly ever an issue -- on all machines we own it
works out of the box. I know of one machine at work were it doesn't, but
I haven't investigated that. Considering the effort it can be to get
drivers to work on Windows I'd consider that a pretty good result. One
out of two dozens is not a bad failure rate.
But MSN video chat is a real problem. Not sure who to blame, but the
solution there is to swap to Skype, which works quite nicely on Linux.
Back when I was trying linux, there are tons of bittorrent clients for
windows but there was only azureus as a more viable option. I can't
use a software that I like.
That's why I see Linux as option for people new to the game. If you have
your preferred set of applications and not much willingness to change,
then you better stay with Windows. That is fair enough, just don't blame
Linux for it ;-) There are plenty of bittorrent clients for Linux to
chose from.
I couldn't update my harmony remote.
I couldn't use virtualdub to compress my video at that time ( I am
sure there were something else, but I gave up)
Those coupon printing sites doesn't work with linux.
I don't know about the virtualdub issue, but I can definitely see the
other two being real problems. I'd never claim you won't lose anything
-- although you can always run Windows in VirtualBox for those last
islands of resistance. Of course that is less trivial than just
installing Ubuntu.
iTune is another hassle.
I wonder how long iTunes will last on Windows ;-) AFAIK Amazon's MP3
store has been open for Linux for a long time.
At the end, I feel I really OS really doesn't matter to me, why spend
so much time on something I don't care, I will just use windows.
Again: fair enough. But you should recognize that many of your problems
stem from you insisting to use the same software as on Windows. That is
not the fault of Linux, which is not meant to be a drop-in replacement
for Windows. The Linux desktop can provide a similar if not better
experience, but it won't be exactly the same. It's not meant to.
And regarding time: it takes me about an hour and a half to get from
bare machine to fully customized Ubuntu installation. With Windows it
takes something closer to a full day since I have to download a lot of
different drivers and applications and then install them individually.
It is common to compare the effort of installing Linux to the effort of
running a pre-installed Windows, which is rational if you want to decide
to swap or not, but not relevant for the comparison of the merits of the
two systems.
In a way the home desktop is the hardest environment, too. If we would
talk about an SOE in a properly run organisation arbitrary hardware is
not an issue. But in a corporate environment we hit the biggest
OpenSource hole I can think of: an Exchange replacement that is less
pain than Exchange itself. Or alternatively: a decent groupware client
that supports Exchange seamlessly. AFAIK neither exists.
Peter
If you want a server, it's a totally different story, you can setup
LAMP stack in no time, where as a lot of php opensource projects did
not test well w/ windows.
On May 8, 7:15 pm, Peter Becker<[email protected]> wrote:
On 09/05/10 05:27, Blanford wrote:> I started trying to get people to use
systems like Ubuntu for years
with little success.
We Linux people must resign ourselves to the fact that most American's
simply cannot handle products that are not commercial.
I'm not in America, my playing fields are Germany and Australia. But my
feeling is that the largest problem is a fear of being different. To
some extent this is actually not all irrational: being different means
you can't ask the next person for help. But most of it seems to be a
less rational fear of the new.
To some extent I think Apple's success has helped Linux. By moving the
market from one having one OS choice into having two, the option of
using something entirely else seems less far fetched. Additionally the
gap in noob-friendliness between Ubuntu and Windows seems to grow every
half year. And last but not least: the priorities of the users shift
more and more onto the web, desktop applications get less important,
which leads to less lock-in regarding the OS choice.
As a result I find people accepting the Ubuntu choice as a reasonable
option. Most of those people would have considered the whole Linux idea
ridiculous not long ago. Most still decide against it (the MS Office
lock in being a common reason), but at least the idea is taking serious.
And I have converted some, none of which ever looked back.
Peter
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