After hearing and reading about how freakin awesome Ubuntu is from friends and all the fanboys on various tech sites I decided to give it a try. I have an older laptop that I thought would be a perfect candidate for exploring the world of Ubuntu. According to everything I have read Ubuntu is easy to use and is a perfect Linux distro to displace the Windows dominance in the desktop market. I figure I have nothing to lose so I decide to jump right in and load the OS to my laptop. Everything went well and I was up and running with Ubuntu. Nice. That’s when the anger and frustration set in.
Issue #1: Wireless
The first thing I attempted to do was get the wireless working. My previous experience with Windows made me believe this would be simple. Oh how wrong I was. I had to dive into the terminal and grab NDIS Wrapper and then run some commands to get this to work. With all of that done I tried again but I was still unable to connect to my wireless router. At this point I was ready to throw the laptop out the window. Off to the forums. After reading a number of forums I tried a few different solutions and finally found the one that worked. I lost count of how many hours I spent on this but I was finally able to download the correct files and after running some more commands in the terminal my wireless connection was up and running. Wooo-hoooo!
Issue #2: Connecting to a Windows Network
This one is still not resolved but apparently it is due to a bug in the Gnome Desktop Environment that is apparently not worth anyone’s time. I set up my Windows machine as a server and it was all set to share selected folders as well as the printer. So I go to my Ubuntu machine and attempt to access it. Of course it is not that simple so I had to download a number of packages and once again run commands in the terminal. With all of the steps completed I was able to browse to my Windows shares and everything seemed to be working perfectly. That is until I open the Windows workgroup and encountered an empty folder. I can get to it but none of the shared files appeared.
Once again it was off to the forums. All of them seemed to be full of people with this same issue and there were plenty of helpful experts there giving advice. Everyone seemed to provide different advice and none of the recommendations actually worked. Following the links that were provided by different people invariably landed me on the same bug report page that informed me that this was a known bug in Gnome and that there was no fix as of yet. Sweet! In the meantime I was easily able to access my Linux machine from the Windows machine with a couple of clicks. Easy. This was not the last of the issues I encountered but the others were not as difficult to overcome. They were still annoying and would probably turn off the average user.
I Like Ubuntu But…
Honestly, I like Ubuntu. For simple every day tasks it is easy to use. Surfing the Internet and using Open Office is not a problem and not much different than using a Windows machine. I also love the fact that it is open and customizable. I can easily change the way my desktop looks and customize the way the system performs and functions to suit my needs. This is great. The problem is when it comes to more complex tasks (that are really not that complex) it becomes convoluted and aggravating. Things like setting up a network or simply accessing a Wireless connection become time consuming and require some knowledge that the average user simply does not have. With Windows these tasks are extremely easy. With Ubuntu it requires downloading a number of packages, unzipping them, running commands in terminal, and then searching through the various forums and blogs to get everything working correctly. The average user is never going to do this. They just want their computers to work and like it or not Windows (and Apple computers) work right out of the box and do everything an average user wants them to do.
I like the challenge that Ubuntu presents. It can be frustrating at times but when I am able to solve an issue I get a sense of satisfaction. I am also constantly customizing and tweaking the environment, which is limited or not possible in a Windows or Apple OS, so I like that too. I am not an average user though. The average user wants to turn their computer on and get on with the task at hand. They don’t care about customizing their OS and they certainly don’t want to open up the terminal and enter command lines to get the Internet to work. Until Ubuntu and other Linux distributions are able to balance the open aspects of the OS with the needs of the average user who just wants it to work they will not gain a significant share of the desktop market. No matter how much the fanboys shout.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I have installed Linux on several machines and had mixed experiences. I agree, it’s not ready for prime time. There are still too many things that are too tricky and quirky. Yes even more so than Windows and Mac. I’m about as technically skilled as anyone I know and still it’s not that easy.
It’s great for servers though.
This is my first venture into Linux so I am not as experienced as you. I am fairly technically skilled myself in that I can usually figure out how to troubleshoot a problem (or at least use Google to find the solution) and I have been frustrated more than once. I still like it but it needs a lot of work before my wife or daughter will be able to use it for more than checking email or browsing the Internet.
I dunno where your network problems came from… I’ve been using Ubuntu close to 4 years now, both at work (shared), and at home (exclusively). Setting up a network, or connecting with and sharing to/from Winderz never takes me more than 10 minutes. Just load SAMBA, share a folder and go. It really is that easy…
Yeah, I have SAMBA loaded up and it I am able to access it from my WIndows machine, no problem. The problem is that while I can navigate to my Windows shared folders from my Ubuntu machine when I open the folder it is empty. I spent a long time looking for a solution and I found there are quite a few people with the same issue https://launchpad.net/+search?field.text=windows+network+empty+folder+ubuntu. If you have a solution I would love to hear it. I am still working on this but not with as much gusto as before.
How strange that I stumble onto this article just a day after posting my own experiences about how Linux’ use of wireless has improved drastically over the last few years.
http://blog.tminusten.com/linux-pain-free-at-last-or-did-i-just-get-lucky/
At the same time, one of the biggest problems with hardware on linux is that the drivers are hit-and-miss, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Yeah, and I understand that the driver issue is not really the fault of Linux developers but it is an issue that needs to be dealt with for it to really gain mainstream acceptance. People want the computer to just work and if they have to deal with a bunch of shit to get that to happen they will go somewhere else.
Exactly my sentiments. Unfortunately there’s not a lot anyone can do other than
1) Hard-code the drivers themself (a nasty job)
2) Implement some sort of wine-like layer to allow all windows drivers to work on linux
Or hopefully, persuade the chip makers to release their own drivers at the same time as those for Windows.
Much like you I check out linux from time to time on an old laptop. I figure this is the best way to test it since laptops are so popular now, and they’re the source of most linux problems. Virtually anyone could install ubuntu on a desktop box, plug in an ethernet cable and a couple of monitors and be away and working.
On a laptop you have the major problem of wireless – what’s the point of a portable computer if you have to be plugged in? – and the issue of using external displays.
It can be done easily enough, but requires some fiddling to set up the laptop so that it can run EITHER the inbuilt monitor OR both monitors, on the fly. It just doesn’t properly agree with it.
At least your wireless is working now though, eh?
How’s the performance, given that it’s an older machine? Tempted to use xfce or one of the myriad of other lightweight environments?
The performance is fine but it really is not that old. It was purchased at the end of 2006 and was running XP previously so it is not ancient by any means. I see no performance issues at all. I might try out some other environments just for the hell of it but not because I am experiencing any problems in terms of performance.
You can skip the GNOME issue with Windows stuff if you follow this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountWindowsSharesPermanently
About the mountpoint stuff, you can type “gksudo mkdir /media/WinShare” into an Alt+F2 runbox to make a mountpoint and then just use that in the directions.
Jon:
#2 *is* what Ndiswrapper is. It’s a way to translate Windows drivers for Linux.
By the way, what kind of wireless card do you have? Broadcoms are, I think, all supported in 8.10 now. I always buy Intel hardware because it works well with Linux.
Mark, I could not agree with you more. I love tinkering with Ubuntu on my machine, but even routine upgrades (like the latest from Intrepid to Jaunty) can invite show-stopping problems out of nowhere. I seriously hope this is not an unavoidable consequence of running open-source software in a proprietary computer, because I don’t see open-source hardware meeting my needs any time soon. I dislike the business models of both Microsoft and Apple, so I’d really like to see a Linux revolution turn the tables, and Ubuntu is probably best-positioned to make that happen. But it remains a LONG way from being a credible threat to Windows or OSX, and that saddens me. My wife, who is an engineer, will not even try Linux because she sees how many hours each week I spend coaxing my machine to do what I want it to do and she has no interest in spending her time that way. She wants productivity from the moment she sits down, and I can’t blame her. Ubuntu has a superior philosophy but retains inferior functionality. Here’s hoping that changes in the next few releases. Jaunty sure as shit is not helping the cause.
It is just not ready. Software not found already compiled for a system. I spent 30 minutes or so finding on how to install a program on my distro of Ubuntu. The Linux community needs to standardize software installations so any program will be immediately recognized and just work. It was cumbersome installing by command line. I could have been working for 30 minutes instead of typing in cryptic commands.