Ubuntu and Its Leader Set Sights on the Mainstream | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu and Its Leader Set Sights on the Mainstream

nytimes.com

48 pointspeter12364 comments

Until someone spends a good bucket of cash on hiring UI talent to clean up the abortion that is the linux desktop, they'll still be lagging way behind OSX and Windows, both of which offer a superior and consistent experience.

I love linux, btw, and know my way around the command prompt fairly well. And, of course, it is my first preference for most server scenarios.

That said, my opinion is that it's a near failure as a desktop OS.

I have Ubuntu installed on my Dell laptop and have had it on there for about a month. It's certainly usable, and I certainly get my work done in it, but it always feels like I'm using something that has been duct taped together. Everytime I climb back aboard my Mac Pro at work, it feels like I just took a shower.

For starters, X has to go the way of Quartz. I still can't get this laptop to play full screen video at a decent frame rate. No problem when I dual boot into Windows. No problem when I had hackintosh installed on this laptop. Why is this so hard? It's not the decoding, it's the drawing.

Basic shit like window ornamentation is always "almost there" and it frustrates me that it isn't "there". It's like the uncanny valley of UI, this linux desktop.

Compviz is cool, but feels cheap and has all kinds of redraw issues.

Most of the free replacements for professional tools feel like they're designed by people with severe visual disabilities. Froo, you are in for a rude awakening thinking you can replace photoshop with Gimp, even Gimp 3.0 is still a long shot away.

Thankfully, I can get my work done in a full screen terminal for most of it, Eclipse for the rest.

That's my opinion after using it for a month. So not ready for prime time.

My experience of Linux these days, under Ubuntu, is that it's no more quirky than Windows or OS X. You're probably blind to many of OS X's deficiencies because you've become used to all but the most intrusive of them.

Problems that you personally have with it are no doubt vexing, but I've had stuff just as annoying with Windows and OS X.

My feeling is that Linux is finally there with Ubuntu. Yes, it lacks some core software, but on the other hand it has some unique features (ease of installation of free software packages particularly) that at last give it the chance for some competitive traction.

I used OS X for a few months a couple of years back and came away hating it (in fact I sold the iBook and replaced it with a Thinkpad running Windows for a perceived performance gain at a lower price). Not all users are equivalent.

I'm not sure where you missed the fact that I can't play full-screen DVD's (both discs and iso's) in ubuntu (I would venture to say a very important feature for the desktop/consumer OS) without it playing back at around 10fps. If I boot into Windows on my other partition, I can playback multiple DVD's fluidly.

On the same machine.

Finally, I'm not an OS fanboy of any persuasion. In fact, I've only been using Mac's for the last two years (though I cut my teeth on them 15 years ago). I use all three platforms almost equally. Linux, Ubuntu in particular, is the weakest experience of them all. In fact, I would put even BeOS in front of Ubuntu in terms of consistency.

Finally, I've done a shit load of hardcore UI desktop development over the last dozen years, so I have a sensitivity to it, I guess. Linux is just not there.

I have gripes about OSX, but at least when I drag a window it doesn't turn black, or it can resize the window in real time. All of the native apps have the same consistent UI elements. Basic fundamental shit.

  > I'm not sure where you missed the fact that I can't play
  > full-screen DVD's (both discs and iso's) in ubuntu (I
  > would venture to say a very important feature for the
  > desktop/consumer OS) without it playing back at around
  > 10fps.

What video card / drivers are you using? It sounds like you simply don't have accelerated video drivers. I frequently play 720p video fullscreened in linux. The same goes for your comment about not being able to resize a window in real time. It sounds like you a have a fairly broken linux experience.

Completely agree with you about UI consistancy, though.

"I'm not sure where you missed the fact that I can't play full-screen DVD's (both discs and iso's) in ubuntu"

No, I didn't miss that.

Something doesn't work for you under Ubuntu on a particular hardware platform? Sorry, but that fails to convince me as proof that Ubuntu's not ready for prime time.

Windows has stupid failings on some hardware. Apple dodge the bullet by controlling their hardware but I'd be surprised if Hackintoshes (or Darwin) were consistently stable on all arbitrary platforms.

Does not work for me != Useless.

Neither Windows nor OS X dies when you close the lid, and when you install any of them on a new machine WIFI just works. Always.

I install every new version of Ubuntu as soon as it's released. Once sleep/resume, WIFI, sound, the trackpad and power management all work without tweaking drivers, I might actually keep it. So far that hasn't been the case on any of the machines I tried.

(I should add that I'm no big fan of any OS so far)

My experience installing OS X on a random machine is that wifi doesn't always work. But, installing it on a mac, it always works. The same thing can be said of installing linux on a random machine. But, installing linux on a mac, wifi always works.

Well, I have never installed OS X on anything but a Mac to be honest. But when installing Linux on my Mac WIFI did not work and once I got it to work it was destroyed by the next automatic Ubuntu update.

Weird, my experience has been exactly the opposite.

I reinstalled ubuntu 8.10 on my Asus notebook less than 2 days ago without any of these weird things happening, wifi, sound, trackpad, power management and sleep/resume all work perfectly without the need to tweak anything.

Coincidentally, with Windows XP I've always had to tweak the power management so that my machine was "always on" as when I closed the lid, it would sleep and when it came back, things just did not work right.

Let's get one thing out of the way, first: the simple fact that you can compare Ubuntu (cost: $0) with OSX ($120 + custom hardware) and Windows ($117) is utterly amazing.

You make a valid point that certain things break and take coaxing and searching message boards to work. That's definitely bad.

The point I would question is that of the UI. There are many aspects of OSX that are weird -- the mouse tracking, installing applications, setting a background color for your desktop, bringing up a terminal. Other issues exist for Windows. I can see how it's hard to detach yourself from something you're used to, though.

Those are going to be the two main issues in getting Ubuntu off the ground with average users. Having shit not break, and being close enough to users' existing habits to make the switch easy.

My hunch is that things are pretty close to where they'll end up. Linux will be an attractive alternative among techies, hobbyists, and average folks with spare/old machines. Microsoft and Apple will respond by cutting prices, and in the end, won't lose a substantial share of the market to Linux on the desktop, but suffer decreased margins. The user wins.

What is exactly is weird with "the mouse tracking, installing applications, setting a background color for your desktop, bringing up a terminal" in OS X?

Mouse tracking: the acceleration is different than what I expect; slow moves don't seem to get me anywhere, quick ones make me overshoot. I've played with settings and downloaded third-party fixes, nothing seems to make it work the way it does in Ubuntu or Windows.

Installing applications: they usually come on a disk image, which you mount, open, and then find the program. Natural inclination is to double click the program and run it. That's great until you unmount the disk image. What you really have to do is drag it to the applications folder. This is never explained, nor do average users know what a disk image is. Windows install wizards are pretty nice; Debian/Ubuntu's package manager is also super nice.

Background color: try setting your OSX background to black. When I tried it, I found that I couldn't. I had to get a purely black image, and then stretch it. Not a problem with Ubuntu or with Windows.

Terminal: by default, the terminal program is not part of the dock, it's buried in the Applications folder. Given that "it's BSD! you have a terminal!" was part of the hype around OSX, I was terribly confused the first time I went on an OSX machine to actually run it. Not a problem with Ubuntu. Moot in Windows, you download Cygwin if you have to.

Mouse tracking - no focus on mouse, and the default track pad speed/sensitivity options are way too low.

Installing application - no app store, basically. Being able to get 99.9% of everything you need for free with a single click is very nice.

'The simple fact that you can compare Ubuntu (cost: $0) with OSX ($120 + custom hardware) and Windows ($117) is utterly amazing.'

Why? They're all competing desktop Operating Systems.

Also for hardware to be supported by your distributor, per other Operating Systems, your vendor pays money to that distributor - eg, Dell and HP pay Canonical to support Ubuntu.

"Why? They're all competing desktop Operating Systems."

Exactly. The fact that Ubuntu Linux can compete with operating systems that you have to pay for is an amazing testament to the skill, determination, and efficiency of all the people behind Ubuntu, Debian, Linux, GNU, etc. Especially when you consider they're not strictly organized under a company with strong leadership, such as Apple under Jobs or Microsoft under Gates.

Edit: Nevermind. I'd thought you meant it was unreasonable you can compare them - ie, the "if it's crap, it's free" excuse. On a third reading I realized you meant something else.

"Until someone spends a good bucket of cash on hiring UI talent to clean up the abortion that is the linux desktop, they'll still be lagging way behind OSX and Windows, both of which offer a superior and consistent experience."

I'm not sure it's just a matter of money. As a UI guy myself, I can tell you that participation on OSS is not very conducive to the way I like design. Many/most of the powerful stakeholders in OSS projects tend to be hackers and power users and there's a bit too much of an emphasis on consensus (gotta keep the volunteer army happy). Great article on "the dumbness of crowds" here: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/0...

I don't think they need to HIRE great UI talent. I think they need to put 'em in charge (a la Apple).

I'm an OS X user by day but very pro Linux generally and have tried hard to use Ubuntu (in particular) as often as I can "on the side".

And.. my biggest problem is there are niggling things that no-one seems to want to fix because they're cross disciplinary. For example, take window moving and resizing. Seamless in Windows and OS X, but on the default GNOME it's a hit and miss affair. Yes, you can press Ctrl and click and easily move windows, but if you try and clickdrag the title bar in the usual way, half the time you don't "grab" the window for some reason.

Worse is resizing (see: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/8473/ ). Only a 6 pixel wide or so region at the bottom right of a window is grabbable, which makes it a real job. It's not seamless like in OS X or Windows. They need to add a transparent grab zone for this. Yet, despite many complaints, metacity developers seem to think it's a theme problem, and themers think it's a metacity thing -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/human-gtk-theme/+b...

With too many disparate elements and tiny fiefdoms, it's hard to dictate good practices from the top down. Once they sort that out, a lot of the UI issues - including those you raise - could be solved, but the dictatorial technique probably isn't going to fly with this community.

"For example, take window moving and resizing."

Yeah, everyone uses compiz's resize window plugin. I think it's enabled by default, try holding down alt & dragging the scroll button.

That's the thing - that method exists but.. it's not default, and something as simple as resizing a window should be seamless by default without the need for hacks.

As a hacker, I love Linux to bits and it beats OS X and Windows in a crazy number of ways. As a user (and it's a hat I proudly wear quite often) I find the UI glitches infuriating, especially as it makes it so hard to recommend to other users I know (because I'll inevitably get the "why can't I resize windows properly?" question 100 times a year).

whoa--that was cool! On fedora 9, that increased the transparency of the window (so I could easily see beneath). That is sweet for this display, where I don't have the room to lay things side-by-side. Thanks!

hah, you're scrolling the button, not click-dragging it.

Glad you like it though. Try using trailfocus for automatic transparency, it's much easier.

The Linux desktop also needs better fonts and better antialiasing. I can't think of a good way to describe it, but the fonts I see in GNOME are kind of fat and frumpy-looking. With the weak antialiasing, the whole picture looks hard on the eyes (this is in Ububtu 8.04 and FC10).

You might want to check your antialiasing settings (in Preferences -> Fonts I think). You can choose different levels of antialiasing, and if you're using an LCD monitor, you'll want to use sub-pixel rendering, which is equivalent to Microsoft's ClearType.

It would be nice if that could be automatically turned on based on your monitor type.

System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Fonts. I just changed mine, it looks a lot better now

There's a patch for cairo that greatly improves subpixel antialiasing (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/cairo-lcd/cairo-lcd/lcd-fi...), but it's not included in any official builds due to patent issues.

Ubuntu has their own version of this patch, but it seems like it's disabled default -- there's instructions here on how to edit to appropriate config files: http://johan.kiviniemi.name/blag/ubuntu-fonts/ The available filter types are "lcdfilternone", "lcdfilterdefault", "lcdfilterlight", and "lcdfilterlegacy"

Read this: http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.h...

Case in point, right after posting this, my f*cking audio stopped working just like that.

Awesome.

Sounds to me like you're having some personal problems, like maybe your graphics card isn't supported. Spend some time at ubuntuforums.com & see if they can help.

This is a pretty common dell laptop. If we're talking about prime time, and I have to ask on forums for help with something basic like this, then is it really ready for prime time?

I don't hate ubuntu, I just hate when people say it's ready for prime time when it's most certainly not. Ready for netbooks? Sure. But not for a full-on windows laptop replacement. No way.

That doesn't necessarily follow, eg lets assume it's a hardware problem. Have you ever tried installing XP from scratch? After you spend hours hunting for drivers, do you conclude windows isn't ready for the desktop? Or look at all the people having hardware problems on the OSx86 forums. Try buying something from dell if you want to convince yourself about readiness for prime time. I don't particularly care, I've been using it for years & I have no problems with window decorations.

That's the thing about Ubuntu (or, Linux in general). When a user has a problem like this, it's not supposed to be his/her fault. And yet whenever a user says "This thing isn't working", Ubuntu supporters immediately say "Ubuntu is fine, your stuff isn't right". It shouldn't be the user's fault. Ever.

If a user's system is unsupported, the OS should know this and fail gracefully. Don't blame the user. Especially if Ubuntu is designed for the "every-user", don't tell them to go to some website. To them, it's just broken and they'll gladly switch back to wherever they came from.

Fail into what? If the video card isn't supported, it's not going to fail into anything really usable.

It's funny that that most people would be happier if you tell them something can't be done than if you gave them some obscure bash incantations. I'm hoping the linux community won't come to regret this influx of new users.

Odd comment in the thread about Ubuntu becoming mainstream. Do you want linux mainstream? It's understandable if not, being mainstream means taking on all those really computer illiterate and all their... special questions.

But if people do want linux to be mainstream that means coming over the users, not the other way around. If you want people to use your product you can't go putting them down because they don't "get" your system. They're using the computer to make their lives easier/better, not to gain your approval.

This has always annoyed the crap out of me when using Ubuntu. There is a ton of great info at ubuntuforums.com, but it is not well organized and questions don't always get answered. Sometimes a problem will get considered answered without really being answered. A simple issue shouldn't require going to the forums, which can be considerable time investment. Maybe community efforts could be focused on a wiki for more common issues and reserve the forums for problematic issues among those doing real development work. Then again I could just be too lazy for Linux.

The wiki is here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community

Personally, I use Google and pick the link that goes to the community wiki, and avoid the forums. Most new users' Ubuntu nightmare situations seem to get started by reading a "this worked for me" sequence of commands on the forums, trying it, causing another chain-reaction of problems, spiralling to a hell of command-line operations and manual software installations that make no sense for the situation, forcing the user to finally reinstall Linux (perhaps another distro) and post angry messages online.

A related problem is that the habits used for casual troubleshooting on Windows -- clicking through menus and dialogs and changing things until the system fixes itself, downloading fixes from a website and installing them -- are generally disastrous on Linux. I suspect this is where most of the land mines on the forums come from.

Searching the wiki documentation is much better than the other two approaches for avoiding these problems.

Hmm, I usually find answers to all my simple questions on google. There's so many of them I think you'd also have to google on a wiki.

If you are on ubuntu hardy I feel your pain. It completely blows. Perhaps this will help, the result of many many painful hours combing the forums. It seems to do the trick for me, anyway. I programmed this as a bash shortcut so I wouldn't forget.

  I don't really know what the fix is when things crap out, I have just kind of tried things blindly.
  http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-968697.html

  (?) sudo alsa reload
  sudo alsa force-reload
    also: look for a dialog that pops up, possibly in task bar, if it asks if reload is ok, it is. beh.

  also related
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/294859
  also suggested:
    sudo killall pulseaudio
    sudo alsa force-reload

  also:
    rm /var/lib/alsa/asound.state (don't include the rm if googling for this post)
    sudo force alsa-reload
      http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:faaeSQtYS4cJ:pennsylvania.ubuntuforums.com/showthread.php%3Fp%3D6242032+gvfs+alsa&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=pl

Is there a new trick for making these wide comments not screw up the page width? The last trick users suggested stopped working in FF4, apparently. What is the latest?

I think this page has nice technique, although it's a bit different than what your old CSS was going for:

http://users.tkk.fi/tkarvine/pre-wrap-css3-mozilla-opera-ie....

P.S. -- disclosure: I work for Mozilla P.P.S. -- I kinda hate CSS

The "toggle word wrap" FF add-on just sticks this into whatever page you're looking at, I think. Works great.

This is exactly the kind of maintenance issue that makes me occasionally hate using Ubuntu.

Oh look! My flash player suddenly stopped working! I get to do six hours of forum combing and troubleshooting, whoppee!

Yeah. Ubuntu marketing says, We make Linux Easy. And mostly this is true. But here, they opted for using the latest and greatest technology (pulse) rather than old and known to work everywhere (alsa) because of developer pressure, in a supposedly LTS version that huge numbers of people are going to use.

I view this is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, ubuntu screwup.

the Ubuntu UI is certainly better than Windows, and also imho easier to adapt to than OS X for Windows users who have had enough...

But it isn't tho', not by any measure. Microsoft (and Apple) have something Linux never has and probably never will: HCI specialists who can't code themselves yet nevertheless, the programmers listen to them and do as they say.

Linux has been pretty solid since 1999/2000, before that it was OK for home use but you had to like messing around with it (although it's no worse than Windows was in '93...making a boot disk to play games to get around the memory limitations). Ubuntu blew the doors off when it came along and made it a Mom and Pop OS i.e. anyone could easily install and use it, I put it on my 60 year-old Aunt's computer.

Also the other reason Linux is gaining in popularity is not due to Linux, most average home computer users all do the same things; check e-mail (web based not ISP), IM (web), browse web pages - all of which are not OS dependent.

Hmmn -- surely, if something were completely independent/neutral of OS, by definition then it would not be able to exert any influence on the popularity of any OS?

So if Linux arguably is gaining in popularity because of average home users checking webmail, browsing etc; then it seems to me this must in fact be ascribable to some fundamental differentiating characteristic(s) of Linux applicable to these users.

Possible differentiators might be cost, ability to arrange for fast boot to a usable web browsing environment, reduced virus concerns, etc. etc.

There's a theory that any industry category will naturally support three competitors, in a certain market-share ratio like 60%, 30%, 10% [1]. This happens free of market manipulation, and mostly depends on marketing strategy rather than the competitors' actual merits. Think Google, MSN and Yahoo right now, for example, or car brands in the past, soft drinks, car rental companies -- there's a market leader, a rival/also-ran, and a something-different. Anyone else has trivial market share.

Following this rule, the market for operating systems is clearly out of whack. Windows' share should be much smaller, but still majority, because that's how it's marketed -- the market leader, the one everybody else uses. Apple should get the Avis spot -- #2, but we try harder. And Linux should still hold onto around 10% share, by adapting to meet the specialized needs that Joe User-oriented OSes have to leave behind.

The rise of cross-platform and platform-independent apps, and mobile devices where the OS shouldn't even be noticeable, break the network effect that supports Windows' considerable lead and allows the market shares to drift back toward the natural ranking.

[1] Closest citation: 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Law of the Ladder. I think Laura Ries has supported the 3-player claim more specifically.

Not necessarily, I'm sure a lot of people thought, and still think, Windows is the only choice i.e. Windows = computer. They don't realize there are other Operating Systems suitable for the home user. Now that Apple is gaining in popularity and applications such as Firefox are OS neutral people have a choice, everything is evening out and that is why Mac and Linux are gaining ground.

A feature on R a few days ago, and now Ubuntu? What, did Stallman's airship raid the NYT over the holidays?

Could 2009 finally be … http://www.google.com/search?q=%22year+of+the+linux+desktop%... ??

I had a dual boot xp/ubuntu system for the last 18 months now and last night around 1am I reformatted and am on a pure ubuntu system as Photoshop was really the only thing that kept me tethered to Windows (I bit the bullet and have instead decided to learn GIMP)

I read the article this morning, good read.

> (I bit the bullet and have instead decided to learn GIMP)

Don't do it. You're artificially constraining yourself with a tool less common, less powerful, less stable, less elegant. If you instead spend that time learning about color science, the benefit to your work (assuming you do any kind of art or design) will be much more significant.

I agree that photoshop is the better of the two tools, I'm mostly using gimp BECAUSE it's a less powerful tool.. it's an experiment to see what I can create using lesser tools so that I rely more on my creative abilities and less on an elegant solution.

I may well end up hating it, but I wont know that until I give it a try.

Using bad equipment as a constraint on your art is not likely to spark creativity, but instead just give you a worse result. It's like saying you're going to start programming in Cobol instead of Python because it might make you rely more on your creative abilities, or you're going to start running in wooden clogs instead of running shoes, or replace your computer display with a 10" one. If you want to guide creative thinking, put a constraint on the output, not the toolset.

I've heard photoshop runs on wine.

Some versions do. There was a big (funded) push to get Adobe's Creative Suite running on Wine a while ago.

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application...

The answer seems to be... no

http://www.google.com/trends?q=linux+desktop

In any case, someone's gonna have to define what "year of the linux desktop" beforehand.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/we_already_had_the_year_of_th...

If only Autodesk products ran on Linux! (I think they made a pact with MS years ago to be exclusive on MS though)

You're statement is wrong unfortunately.

Maya (arguably the premier 3D modelling program for film and games) runs on Windows, Mac and Linux systems

Well, their primary applications, such as AutoCad and Revit, only run on Windows. They own roughly 80% of the world market in these cad applications.

Well the issue probably is the companies that use Autodesk need to print the drawings they create on special printers. With special drivers. And thats only the tip of the iceberg I'm sure.

From the article: "Ubuntu (pronounced oo-BOON-too)" -- intended pun or involuntary irony?

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