Farewell, Ubuntu

[Ralph Janke]

dartrod wrote:
> 1. Printer installation was not as straight forward as it should be, but 
> eventually resolved.  Not a user friendly experience.
>   
Well.. that can happen with Windows as well. Especially Vista is
very bad with supporting old peripherals.

On the other hand, I just bought an HP All-in-one printer here (my
usual one is still on the way). I intended to install the driver and
was positively surprised. Ubuntu 8.04 informed me just after
plugging the printer in the usb port that I could use it. There
could not be any better usability for this particular printer.

>  
> 2. Lack of display control from the desktop.  Resolved by switching 
> monitors until I found a monitor that was satisfactory.  Again not a 
> user friendly solution.
>
>   
I had similar problems with Windows before. Again, I agree
we need to work harder to resolve the remaining issues, but that
does not put Ubuntu or Linux in a worse spot than Windows.

> 3.  Sound doesn't work.  I have searched for a solution that doesn't 
> involve rebuilding whatever.  Again not user friendly and a show stopper.
>
>   
Again, I personally have not found any hardware yet to have this
problem with Ubuntu. I have with Windows. However, for both 7.10
and 8.04, I have seen a lot of support requests and bugs for this
issue in the Ubuntu database.

> I am awaiting the next version hoping the sound problem will be 
> addressed.  I know, I know, that hacking the distro and hardware could 
> likely solve these problems.  All that would prove is that Ubuntu is not 
> ready for the average user.
>
>   
Well, if we would get the information on how hacking the distro would
solve the problem, we would include the fixes and therefore over time
disprove your statement that Ubuntu is not ready yet for the average
end-user.

Btw. My wife (not a computer geek) and my 10-year old son are using
exclusively Ubuntu for the last 4 years. Given, I have installed their
computers, but then, you do not buy a PC without installed OS anyway.
Given that if you would be able to buy your computer in the shop already
configured and installed, you would have the same experience as with
the Windows computer you get currently (very likely even better). Adding
additional software on Windows PC causes often far worse problems than
with Ubuntu. Under this perspective, Ubuntu is far more ready for the
average end-user than Vista is.


> If the sound problem and other problems are not solved with the next 
> version of Ubuntu it will be Bye Bye Ubuntu and I will not recommending 
> Ubuntu  to anyone.
>   
Well, in contrast to Windows, you have the opportunity to
support the efforts to resolve these issue. Please
file a report with all the necessary details on
http://answer.launchpad.net
or http://bugs.launchpad.net , and maybe test possible fixes if they are
announced.
> Windows has it's problems but they can be resolved fairly easily by the 
> average user and if not there is a ton of expertise readily available.
>
>   
Well, I am an IT professional for 25 years and I have never had more
problems
with any system but Windows. Some say, it is supposed to be like that
because
that means that I could always have a job. However, I believe Linux is
the future.
Also, compare Ubuntu with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 not with Windows XP.
Linux
has not even half the lifetime as Windows has, but already a comparable
user-friendliness
as Windows with a far superior stability (I vever ran a Windows server
for 3 years without
reboot).

And the biggest plus for Linux is, everybody can participate in making
it better. I understand
that it is often frustrating when issue that happen to you personally
are not resolved
within short time, one can get very frustrated. On the other hand, there
is a lot of
expertise available for Linux and Unix systems. Otherwise, it would not
be the case that
world-wide the financial industry are changing their back-office systems
to Linux, while
almost all high-availability systems in the telecommunication industry
are Unix systems (in
the future likely to be Linux or Open Source Unix).

Therefore, again my plea. Please report your issues at the central place
for ubuntu, that
we can take care of them.

Thanks for your help in making Linux better every day!

- Ralph
> My configuration is:
>
> AMD Athelon 64 LE 1640 2.6 GHZ 45 watt L2-1MB AM2
> AMD Athelon 64 original Stock Fan and Heatsink
> Kingston DDR2 PC2-5400 1GN/667 MHz
> BIOSTAR MCP6P-M2 (NVIDIA GF6150, SATAII, RAID, DDR2-800
> NVIDIA GeForce 6150 GPU Memory share upto 512MB
> Onboard High Definition Audio
> Onboard Network Card
> 450W ATX Power Supply
> Western Digital CaviarSE 160GB 7200RPM SATA
> LG DVD-RAM GSA-H55N
>
>
> Ralph Walker
> Calmar, Alberta
>
> 2  PC's and 2 laptops in the house.
>
>
>
>
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