FUD or truth on Ubuntu
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 29, 2009 7:07 PM EDT |
I don't think it's FUD, it's just poorly done ... I use the Windows "file browser" all the time. It's not any faster than Nautilus, that's for sure. Comparing the default text editor in Windows - NotePad - with anything in Linux or Unix, NotePad will lose every time. Now ... Notepad++ is one of the best text editors out there, and it happens to be a Windows app. The "look" of Ubuntu: I think more than a few users find the Ubuntu brown to be less than ideal, but that can always be changed ... But other than that, I think potential Ubuntu users from Windows have much more to worry about than Nautilus and Gedit ... so I think this guy is way off the mark. |
| tracyanne Apr 29, 2009 7:53 PM EDT |
There's a couple of things that might be correct, I'm seeing otehr that don't seem to meet my experience. I'll have to go over it. |
| jdixon Apr 29, 2009 8:56 PM EDT |
> I use the Windows "file browser" all the time. It's not any faster than Nautilus, that's for sure. Agreed. I have no idea what he's been doing to see that difference. While I will grant that Nautilus is a comparatively slow file manager, in my experience, Windows explorer is even slower.. And, BTW, does the Ubuntu /usr/bin only have 1950 entries? A quick ls | wc -l says my Slackware /usr/bin has 3257. I don't use Nautilus at all on my machine, so I can't speak to the other issues, As for backup mode being enabled by default in gedit, I see that as a good thing. YMMV. As for all Windows files being mounted as executable, that's Window's fault, not Ubuntu's. Windows is the one who doesn't store an executable attribute, forcing Linux to assume that all the files are executable. So, at best 50/50. |
| tuxchick Apr 29, 2009 10:24 PM EDT |
He raises some valid performance issues and problems. Nautilus began life as poo, and has not advanced very far beyond that. Copy-and-paste on a system with both Gnome and KDE apps is a special hell of inconsistencies and mysterious behavior. Some of the other items he mentions are not so; for example you can select multiple files in List view just fine with Shift+click or Control+click, just like in winderz. It's a stretch to claim that the problems he discusses are why windows users are not flocking to Linux. |
| jdixon Apr 29, 2009 10:33 PM EDT |
> Some of the other items he mentions are not so; for example you can select multiple files in List view just fine with Shift+click or Control+click, just like in winderz. Thanks, TC. I suspected he was wrong, but not having Nautilus, I couldn't check. |
| theboomboomcars Apr 29, 2009 10:40 PM EDT |
The only thing I really agree with is the gnome menu being really slow the first time. It seems reasonable that if the user has the menu on a panel that pre caching it on start up would be that bad of a thing to do, since if the menu is there it will be used. |
| d0nk3y Apr 30, 2009 12:07 AM EDT |
>Copy-and-paste on a system with both Gnome and KDE apps is a
>special hell of inconsistencies and mysterious behaviour Oh, I'm going to the special hell... |
| caitlyn Apr 30, 2009 12:26 AM EDT |
Yep, you're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater. |
| shyster Apr 30, 2009 4:07 AM EDT |
Just an indictment of gnome. KDE is the gui for newbies as it most closely resembles windows. We run Mepis 8 with kde and use a kvm to windows...it is easy to switch back and forth as the interfaces are so similar. I guess if we ran macs, we would want to run gnome for the same reason. |
| r45d15 Apr 30, 2009 6:34 AM EDT |
Hi folks, I'm the author of that blog. Sorry for not being clear enough. I have updated my blog. For example I posted a very short video to showcase what I mean by "selecting multiple files". I was also misunderstood about the "drag and drop", I'm thinking to post another short video about "drag and drop" to remove misunderstandings. Thanks for you comments. |
| tuxtom Apr 30, 2009 7:53 AM EDT |
[quote]KDE is the gui for newbies as it most closely resembles windows.[/quote[
@shyster - You should qualify that by saying KDE has an out-of-the-box default layout that more closely resembles Windows. Both Gnome and KDE can easily be configured to give any layout you care to have. In that regard, KDE is much more friendly to new users because it doesn't force-feed the minority opinion of a few elitist desktop developers as to what desktop layout a user should have. Gnome forces users to learn something different. Better to start with the familiar if you want to grow your user base. By using an unconventional layout Gnome is retarding the growth of Linux, as people don't want to learn an unfamiliar environment. A heck of a lot more people would be using Ubuntu if it had a Windows-centric desktop layout. And Gnome is not at all like Mac OS X. Not at all. It is 100% foreign to users migrating from a mainstream OS. Also, Gnome certainly has more Windows-like constraints on what is available in the GUI and it shields the user from getting under the hood. In that regard Gnome is certainly the desktop for newbies. Most advanced users I know eschew Gnome and go with either KDE or a lightweight "desktop". |
| tracyanne Apr 30, 2009 8:00 AM EDT |
Quoting:By using an unconventional layout Gnome is retarding the growth of Linux, as people don't want to learn an unfamiliar environment. I'm not seeing that. |
| tuxchick Apr 30, 2009 9:23 AM EDT |
If people don't want to learn an unfamiliar environment why do they stick with windows? Win 95 was radically different from 3.1, and it was a huge success. XP was way different from 2000, and everything was moved around and stuffed into different places. Vista was even weirder, with the added free bonus of new extreme annoyances like UAC. Windows 7 is organized differently yet again, and the tech press are all swoony over it and hailing it as The Best Windows Evah. Be careful with unsupported sweeping generalizations, someone might mistake you for a pundit or analyst. |
| gus3 Apr 30, 2009 10:06 AM EDT |
Then perhaps it's time to reveal my evil plans. Mwahahahahahaha..... *hand rubbing, evil grin, furtive glances, all that stuff* EDIT: It needs to be an article/essay, not a comment. Hopefully I can write it up within twelve hours, and I will submit it here. |
| number6x Apr 30, 2009 12:54 PM EDT |
I have a Xubuntu install that has gone from 7.10 to 8.04 to 8.10 ls | wc -l in /usr/bin gives me 2478 The Xubuntu flavor has all gnome programs from vanilla Ubuntu. Even if I use gnome, I use thunar as file manager. I have no idea whats wrong with nautilis. it is slow. |
| tuxchick Apr 30, 2009 1:37 PM EDT |
gus, won't revealing your evil plans foil them? |
| ColonelPanik Apr 30, 2009 2:55 PM EDT |
Of everyone on LXer the Colonel is the least. Least able to do
anything on a computer. Least able to RTFM. Can't remember
those esoteric commands for the terminal. Networking is my
personal nightmare, right after LAMP and WiFi. You all know
this, and I thank you for putting up with me! /serious But what in purgatory is your problem with Ubuntu? You guys are the pros. The talent lurking in these threads is like from some other world, a smart world. 9.04 was a perfect release, from a clean install to using the update manager. What did you do to finesse these problems? Or am I getting better at this computer stuff? |
| theboomboomcars Apr 30, 2009 3:03 PM EDT |
Colonel, aren't LAMP and WiFi subsets of networking? Just a couple of the different directions your nightmares may go. |
| ColonelPanik Apr 30, 2009 4:13 PM EDT |
Linux, where your dreams become nightmares and
your nightmares become reality. theboomboomcars, only if you know they are! I guess I didn't. Thanks for pointing that out. |
| Libervis Apr 30, 2009 5:23 PM EDT |
I for one think it was a good article. And I could even add more to that.. Linux is a frankenstein OS and given that fact it's actually amazing it functions as well as it does, but it's frankenstein-ish nature rears its head here and there spoiling the party. Other times it's just bad defaults. :P Bigger problems than those in the third point he dedicated most of his article to are the lack of applications, games and drivers though, and as someone who after being a staunch supporter of the Free Software ideology completely turned around and went as far as trying out Vista (and considering using it as my primary OS), I have some doubts about FOSS model of development as superior as well, or at least the bazaar model. It's taking way too much time to get to the point where Vista and OS X are usability-wise and even more to get FOSS applications to the point at which proprietary counter parts are. Linux has its killer features (workspaces, sticking windows on top are examples of things I can't live without), but it just simply lacks terribly in some other things (mostly inconsistency in behavior, look and feel and performance (for what it's worth, I can say that Vista feels like a faster OS than Ubuntu on Core2Duo with 3.5 GB of memory)). There is tremendous potential though, but at this rate it'll take like a decade more to get there, if ever. In that amount of time it might not even matter anymore. The potential is in becoming the first OS to achieve what might have been thought impossible; use various different components developed separately across the world into a single unified OS that beats the pants down in speed, efficiency, performance and usability from all competition (OS X and Windows basically). It's not there yet though. I can say one thing, if anyone's gonna deliver that, it's Mark Shuttleworth. He's got some good ideas (harmonization of release cycles goes a long way for one). He's the right business and community leader in the Linux OS furnishing realm, certainly better than the likes of RMS.. /rant |
| tracyanne Apr 30, 2009 5:39 PM EDT |
Quoting:went as far as trying out Vista (and considering using it as my primary OS) I actually have to use Vista from time to time at work (either that or XP or server 2003), I simply can't believe that you find it in any way superior to any Linux desktop, or even Windows XP, for that matter. It's a monster, it's horrible and byzantine, and baroque, all at the same time, and it has none of the really useful features I want, and miss every time I use Windows, which is 5 days a week for 8 hours, on my desktop. Vista has no redeeming features, XP is, by far, more acceptable if you have to use Windows. |
| gus3 Apr 30, 2009 6:28 PM EDT |
Quoting:gus, won't revealing your evil plans foil them?Actually, you've already revealed them. I just need to connect a few dots to draw a picture. (pun intended... you'll see) |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 30, 2009 6:46 PM EDT |
I think the desktop environments that come with Linux/Unix -- GNOME, KDE, Xfce, etc. -- would serve themselves well not by mimicking the functionality of Windows and OS X but by enhancing usability/functionality/productivity in their own way. Multiple desktops didn't come to OS X until about a year or so ago. That idea would be too radical for Windows even now. The X Window system has had multiple desktops seemingly forever; probably as many as your memory will allow in some window managers (I know this is true in Fvwm). Being able to use a dozen different file managers -- you can't do that in Windows or OS X. Running with no GUI if you wish; not possible in OS X or Windows as far as I know ... same hold for restarting the GUI w/o rebooting the whole machine. Clearly I'm reaching here, but what I'd like to see is more things in FOSS operating systems that is original, useful and just plain cool -- and not what we think will make users of other OSes comfortable. What will draw users to FOSS OSes in the long run are killer apps that you can't get, things you can't do, in the top two non-FOSS operating systems. More of that, less of "it's just like Windows/OS X" ... that's where we should be headed. |
| caitlyn Apr 30, 2009 6:54 PM EDT |
Steven: Multiple desktops have been available in Windows since NT 4.0 at least It requires a free (as in free beer) add on app from Microsoft. |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 30, 2009 7:02 PM EDT |
Re: multiple desktops in Windows -- nobody told me (until now). I'll have to get that on my XP box at the office. What I'm saying is that FOSS should lead, not follow. |
| tracyanne Apr 30, 2009 7:15 PM EDT |
@Steven, If I could find a multiple desktops for Windows that was reliable, and not cludgy to use, i'd use it, but all the Free and free ones I've tried are not a patch on the Linux multiple desktops. |
| gus3 Apr 30, 2009 7:46 PM EDT |
Kind of like user security and bugs in Linux. All included for free. In Windows, you only get bugs, and they cost you. |
| Libervis Apr 30, 2009 10:23 PM EDT |
Tracyanne, I'm not even the only one who's had some positive experiences with Vista. I was actually encouraged to try it by two another long time FOSS supporters and Linux geeks. Just to make your jaw drop a little further. :D Anyway, it's not without problems for sure, and we both did end up back on Linux, Ubuntu specifically, but when I say it performs better I'm not lying, though it's possible this has something to do with the fact that on Windows my video card has a proper full driver whereas on Ubuntu, since Jaunty, my card was dropped and I have to use the free and rather inferior, incomplete driver (R300). You say it doesn't have the features you want so it's possible you simply have different needs and use cases than I, but I can't really make out constructively what does "monster, it's horrible and byzantine, and baroque, all at the same time" refer to specifically. :) Except the "monster" remark, cause it IS a huge beast. My install after updates took freaking 24 GB (home premium), it's crazy. And I hear it's also sluggish on 2GB of memory or less. What eventually made me reinstall XP in place of Vista and set up a dual boot between Ubuntu and XP was tendency for Vista to grind the disk even after turning search indexing off, the fact that NTFS fragments too easily and I don't like adding defragmentation to a maintenance list, which already includes scanning for spyware and viruses, and also the huge disk space use, since I didn't want to give the windows partition more than 35GB and I wanted to try some Steam games on it which are a few gigs big.. so I have them on XP now.. Bottom line is though that I am now convinced that to a certain extent the extremely bad rep that Vista got WAS a lot due to FUD and that Linux advocates aren't exactly innocent when it comes to spreading FUD about the OS. For instance, the DRM aspect of Vista I simply didn't notice. Performance on my machine was good (I expected everything to be super slow given what some Linux fans wanted me to think) etc. Trying Vista gave me some objectivity I needed badly. Steven_Rosenber, I agree Linux should take its own way. The problem isn't necessarily that it isn't like OS X or Windows. The problem are inconsistencies. If a particular serious desktop distribution like Ubuntu decides to provide users a unique way of using a computer which users can then get used to, it should be consistent. Otherwise this "getting used to" is highly impaired as the user begins to expect one behavior and then all of a sudden different behaviors pop up. Let it be different, but consistent and usable and BETTER than others, not just different for difference's sake. Paying for some serious usability research still helps in that area. |
| ColonelPanik Apr 30, 2009 10:50 PM EDT |
Mrs. Panik's new Dell Inspiron 1210 came with Ubuntu.
Well, it came with Dellbuntu. You cannot believe how
much they screwed up Gnome. Whoever did the desk-
top design had never used anything but Winders. But since it is Linux there were ways and means to fix the ugly. Other than the ugly, its a very nice package. Just big enough to do extended sessions and almost as small as a netbook..Light, thin, looks cool. More as Mrs. Panik uses it. |
| gus3 Apr 30, 2009 11:20 PM EDT |
Quoting:You cannot believe how much they screwed up Gnome.Oh, yes I can. Remember, "Unix gives you enough rope to hang yourself, and a couple more feet, just to be sure." |
| tracyanne Apr 30, 2009 11:46 PM EDT |
Quoting:You say it doesn't have the features you want so it's possible you simply have different needs and use cases than I, but I can't really make out constructively what does "monster, it's horrible and byzantine, and baroque, all at the same time" refer to specifically. :) Except the "monster" remark, cause it IS a huge beast. My install after updates took freaking 24 GB (home premium), it's crazy. And I hear it's also sluggish on 2GB of memory or less. Features: Apart fom not wanting to have to deal with Antivirus software. Simple easy to easy to implement and use security, that actually works. Multiple Desktops (doesn't have to be 3D compiz Cube,I never used the cube on Mandriva and I had 9 desktops) that are not a cludge [I've tried a lot of different ones for Windows, and they all seem rather cludgy], that come with the system, and are not 3rd party or even "power tools" addons. The ability to pin Windows always on top. The ability to shade Windows. A fast uncluttered desktop, with the ability to extend it to suit my needs, not just to make it look pretty. The ability to use my computer as a non root user, and elevate my privileges when needed by simply straight forward means. It's Byzantine because compared to XP and Any Linux machine I've use it's complex, unnecessarily, The Security with the UA whatever is annoying, and switching it off defeats the purpose. It's Baroque because the GUI is over designed, and it isn't easy, maybe not possible, to simplify the Design. At least on Xp I can turn off all the bumf and use the Win98 style desktop skin (it's not as pretty as my Linux desktop, but it's simpler and by no means as garish as the standard Vista or XP desktop skin) |
| tracyanne May 01, 2009 12:03 AM EDT |
the lack of the ability to the ability to pin Windows always on top, and to shade Windows is hugely frustrating, on any version of Windows. |
| Libervis May 01, 2009 1:16 AM EDT |
Ah, then you're close to me.. Those are about the features I like on Linux too and miss on Windows, especially the windows pinning and multiple desktops. I suppose I was mostly impressed by performance (though this is a pretty powerful machine), bling, driver support (for my video card especially), consistency and overall wholeness in general and the fact that all apps I would want work natively.. Btw, speaking of performance, it just seems like the windows GUI system is more responsive with full load than Xorg. Though my friend also blames Linux kernel memory management. On Linux if you run some very minimal window manager like openbox everything is super fast and responsive, for the most part, but if you run something full featured like GNOME or KDE there are sometimes noticeable slow downs. And this is on a machine with a Core2Duo processor with 3.5 GB of RAM so hardware can hardly be blamed, not even a video card since then performance even in openbox would have to somehow be impaired. So it seems as if Linux OR Xorg somehow slow things down when running larger chunks of stuff in memory, even when there's plenty of memory space to go around. Comparably, even on generic Vista drivers, Aero with full desktop effects and even Winamp visualizations it all works smooth, fast and responsively without any hitch whatsoever. It does take a lot of memory, but at least it gives performance in return. It just feels like you actually get the bang for memory you've got. The windows system in question, from what I heard, is known as WDDM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model Perhaps, just perhaps, something that was made by Microsoft could actually be technically interesting and even superior, proprietary or not. |
| gus3 May 01, 2009 1:35 AM EDT |
Libveris: Context switching, whether from one process to another or from ring 4 to ring 0 (user to kernel mode), has a cost, no matter what processor it runs on. Windows reduces this cost by placing all sorts of horrible UI code in the kernel, ring 0. Linux (and other Unices) keep the UI code in its own process, which incurs a process schedule/switch. In other words, Windows trades security for speed. It's business as usual for them, as evidenced even now by the Conficker fiasco. No thanks. I'll stick with Linux, which has its priorities straight when it comes to security. What good is a fast system if it gets PWN3D before you can even get the first set of security updates installed? |
| Libervis May 01, 2009 1:49 AM EDT |
Hm, I'm not as technical to understand why does that reduce security. And if it does, is it possible to do it without it incurring a security issue? Though I don't expect anything to change so just asking out of curiosity. Also, given that there is an increasing amount of malware for Linux anyway the two often said theories come to mind; (1) an OS is as secure as its user/administrator and (2) Linux and OS X are mostly perceived as more secure because they're less popular. Though I'm not saying that Linux isn't more secure by design, I'm just unsure as to how far does this fact go in actually preventing its increasing vulnerability.. Btw, I also tried Mac OS X on my machine (got OSx86) and with no 3D support whatsoever (I actually couldn't enable it for my ATI card), 3D features like minimizing, transparency and shadows worked smoothly. It could be that whatever MS and Apple are doing, even if it's in the kernel, it's making it more suitable for *desktops*... Hmm.. maybe there should be multiple Linux kernels.. Linux Server and Linux Desktop, with optimized features for both. I've seen that idea floated before... (EDIT: Or maybe big desktop distros like Ubuntu should maintain their own modified kernels at some point or just apply special desktop optimization patches..) I wish Haiku OS had big corporate sponsors behind it. It's another OS designed from bottom up to be multimedia and desktop use friendly (based on last code released by BeOS). Unfortunately, at this rate Haiku OS will never catch up. It could be a perfect desktop OS. It's FOSS and designed for multimedia. http://www.haiku-os.org/ |
| gus3 May 01, 2009 2:31 AM EDT |
Libveris: Ring 0 and ring 4, on x86, cannot stomp on each other without deliberate border-crossing on the part of the programmers. Think of it in the context of a real, current security concern: The Adobe PDF reader has a problem with JavaScript being able to access resources that it shouldn't. In Linux, keeping it always in ring 4 (lowest privilege) means that, at best, the application will simply die with a segmentation fault; at worst, may mess around with a user's files, but cannot alter the contents of root-owned files anywhere in the $PATH. In Windows, the least-bad scenario is a segfault termination. However, because UI code can have access to ring 0 (highest privilege), a carefully crafted hack can result in system access with administrator rights... all files writable... partition table vulnerable... network connection wide open to everybody... get the picture? The pathetic thing about Windows is that so many of their (MS's) own apps, including Office, expect these security vulnerabilities to be present. If Microsoft closed off all these holes, lots of applications, including the Office suite, would suddenly stop working. Does this make more sense? |
| Libervis May 01, 2009 4:04 AM EDT |
Yeah, thanks. |
| helios May 01, 2009 9:59 AM EDT |
(for what it's worth, I can say that Vista feels like a faster OS than Ubuntu on Core2Duo with 3.5 GB of memory)). That's fine, but the people I deal with have 4-6 year old machines with 256 meg of ram and can't even grasp the concept of left vs right click and copy and paste. (You and me...right Gus?) We're dealing with people that possess less than rudimentary skills here for the most part,or at least I am. GNU/Linux has provided hundreds of our "clients" an environment that is worry-free of viruses and consistent system crashes. I can't argue with some of the other points as they largely bear truth but when you are dealing with people that only want to send a few emails and visit with their grandkids via Ekiga or Pidgin, Linux slays the snot out of the other OS's. The elites will work these other things out but I seriously doubt it will take a decade. Look at the almost exponential improvements in the last year. Linux went from "wireless and webcam support sux" to "it mostly just works" in one Kernel update. h |
| gus3 May 01, 2009 10:15 AM EDT |
On its way, h... Oh, and you owe me a monitor, after your "slays the snot" comment! |
| Pool_isCool May 01, 2009 10:49 AM EDT |
Granted and it does all seem to work seamlessly. There are annoyances from time to time such as my recent update to Ubuntu 9.03 with 2.6.28.11 Kernal and lost a fully operational VMware interface. Now it didn't take much to get it all back up and running again mostly an annoyance more than anything else.But for the users willing to persist and work with the system you will fall in love with it all as of todate I have found nothing I can't do with my linux desktop that Winderz used to do. I keep Winderz XP in the VMware side for certain proggies Turbo Tax and the likes. That don't sport a Linux interface. |
| helios May 01, 2009 1:21 PM EDT |
That's fair Gus...It's on it's way. You just pay the shipping. Oh, it's a 24 inch Samsung CRT. h |
| Libervis May 01, 2009 8:28 PM EDT |
No argument there, for slower machines and basic usage Linux is the winner, and a lot more in fact. It's probably more fair to say where it doesn't win than where it does. And the list would be a known one; games, certain productivity apps, some inconsistencies and lacks in usability and sometimes performance, albeit those are less major). |
| chalbersma May 02, 2009 3:40 PM EDT |
I have to be honest. Nautilus is as slow as... Windows. It's bad. Give me Thunar or Dolphin anytime. |
| Sander_Marechal May 06, 2009 11:14 AM EDT |
Quoting:for what it's worth, I can say that Vista feels like a faster OS than Ubuntu on Core2Duo with 3.5 GB of memory Humour yourself and run a few benchmarks. Vista only "feels" fast because the UI responds a tad quicker thanks to running in ring 0 like gus3 explained. But I bet you that the actual amount of work done is lower on Vista. Also, when benchmarking Linux, please don't just benchmark Ubuntu. It's one of the slowest and most resource hungry distros out there. |
| azerthoth May 06, 2009 1:22 PM EDT |
check your resource usage too, Vista makes extensive use of precaching. |
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