Increasing user base of Ubuntu desktop.

[Thomas Ward]

Okay, guys, with my community leadership hat on: before you read any 
further on this, don't take shots at each other, we're all on the same 
side here.  If you want to argue different points of view, do it in a 
civil tone, please don't call people "bogus" or fight with people about 
hardware, etc. and don't swear please (even if you obfuscate it - this 
is a civil place not a place to fight).

Now, on to my response, WITHOUT my CC hat on.  Also without my other 
hats on, but I put them all in the signature because I mention them 
here, and because it shows the breadth of my exposure to the 'current 
community state of mind' at large (i.e. Ask Ubuntu and such).

FIRST, some background on me.  I am a long time Ubuntu user, first used 
it in 2009, where it massively improved performance on my then Dell 
Vostro laptop that I had for college.  I admit though I dualbooted - 
Linux as primary driver, Windows for gaming or specific Windows only 
software.  2012 is when I really got deeper into it and started doing 
support on Ask Ubuntu (and hey, I'm also a moderator there now!).  2014 
is when I started doing actual development.  And then I continued to get 
involved deeper and deeper into the Server side of things, then started 
maintaining packages, then got full upload privs everywhere in Ubuntu, 
leading to me getting positions on the Developer Membership Board, 
Lubuntu Team/Council, Community Council, and other positions.  And just 
as a point, I recently finally applied in Debian for Debian Maintainer 
to have upload access to all my packages I maintain (two of them), and 
that was approved two days ago, and is waiting for Debian admins to 
update my status.

I'm very fluent in Ubuntu and how it works, and know far more than I 
want to admit.  With this in mind, my responses will be the "Power user 
comments on user problems and concerns based on long-term observation of 
Ask Ubuntu, user complaints/concerns, etc.

On 3/20/22 11:38, Amit wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was thinking about how to increase the user base of Ubuntu desktop.
>
> More and more people will use Ubuntu desktop if it (GUI, etc.) is easy 
> to use.

Technically speaking, the GUI *is* easy to use.  It's not hard to find 
applications with the search bar in vanilla Ubuntu, and the GUI is not 
the concern here usually.


> First timers and older people should also find Ubuntu desktop easy to 
> use (having very short learning curve).
>
> Microsoft Windows is there on about 90% of all (computer) systems 
> mainly because it is very easy to use.
>
> Windows is not a great OS but it is so easy to use that first timers 
> and older people also use it without much issues.

And herein lies my beginning of countering your statements.

It is **well known** that Ubuntu ISOs are restricted from shipping 
certain software or drivers due to legal constraints. Windows has legal 
agreements to install special Windows fonts, software, etc. and install 
codecs for DVDs, etc. from other companies.  Ubuntu and the Open Source 
world (including Debian, etc.) don't have those legal agreements and 
therefore are restricted from shipping certain binary drivers, etc. and 
other software that would normally be available in Windows.

Windows has been a dominant market share since **the dawn**.  I was born 
in 1990.  In Kindergarten, we had old 5.5inch floppy disk computers that 
we had to boot those disks to for software.  In 1st through 3rd grade, 
we had Windows 3.1 on old IBM systems for use for school emails between 
staff.  In 4th grade, systems started being upgraded to Windows 95.  
Then 98.  Then 2000 by the time I was in middle school (6-8th grade).  
Then XP through high school. ME was kinda skipped in the school world.

The only other competitor was Apple, which in the timespan Windows grew 
had a lag before it had any significant market share.

In comparison to "Hey it's ready off the shelf!" Windows and Apple 
environments, initial UNIX (and later Linux) builds were not GUI 
oriented, were mostly CLI, had server gearing, and were used by 
'techies' who weren't held to the same level as 'consumer users' as they 
needed high technical skills to use it.

Then enter GUI Linux.  The large GUI linux stuff started to kick in 
around here in the 2000s, with RHEL being around and used in tech 
colleges for special projects.  In fact, when I first went off to 
college in 2009, Carnegie Mellon University had primarily Windows 
endpoint systems connected into the RHEL/UNIX backends that powered the 
core.  I haven't been back at CMU since 2010 because I changed 
universities and had a job since then once I graduated Penn State, but 
my understanding is they still have RHEL labs, and also now support Macs.

Beyond the Windows market share problem, we *all* are aware of hardware 
support problems.  Wifi card drivers that're on the ISOs don't get 
installed properly for certain wifi hardware chipsets, leaving people 
without the ability to use their systems post-install and unable to get 
downloads (hint: the laptops / mobile computing markets nowadays 
**generally do not ship systems with Ethernet anymore**, leaving 
"Connect your cable for Internet to get drivers" more or less the 
dinosaur).  When you visit Ask Ubuntu and look at the most active posts, 
you see a huge portion of them are nVidia, AMD, or networking driver 
problems.  The drivers issue there is the key problem, solving the 
problems is not as straightforward as downloading the updated drivers 
via Windows Update which needs no user intervention other than 
connecting to a network connection, and because of the 'driver problems' 
and 'hardware compatibility' (which i'll give you recent use case 
problems about!) issues, it's deemed that "Ubuntu is too hard for the 
average use case" by the broader world at large.  And then people expand 
that to be "Linux" because they don't know the differences between 
systems / environments.

I mentioned 'hardware compatibility'.  At my FT job at the beginning of 
the COVID pandemic, we needed to come up with a way to keep systems 
secure so intel analysts at my job could access Corporate resources 
*and* non-corporate resources in a secure way.  We're a Windows house 
with session hosts typically, but we have Linux environments for 
research systems.  We have a mix of Dell and HP systems that are mobile 
systems / laptops at this time.  We rolled a 'hybrid' solution - RDWeb 
for remote desktop web access on the session hosts on the web browser, 
coupled with an NGINX frontend in front of it that required SSL Client 
Certificates to even get access.  Those client certs were issued by IT 
per-system and installed accordingly.  And voila, that solution worked.  
We've since moved to MS365 and Azure gateways with Microsoft + 2FA auth, 
but the point still stands - we came up with an Ubuntu driven solution 
for the endpoint systems.  However, while the Dell laptops behaved 
swimmingly, the HP systems took at least 3 days of me as a sysadmin 
beating it into submission to get it to behave, and it came to a 
roundabout way to make it work with the UEFI stuff.  Once we got that 
working, though, forcing it into legacy mode (the HP UEFI did not 
support UEFI mode with Ubuntu, and we couldn't turn off secure boot 
because of the way HP did their BIOS) allowed us to deploy the solution 
in mass.

However, getting those systems working was a pain, and it required 
training of our IT support guy and the windows sysadmin and a few other 
volunteers to mass image the systems and set them up.  We finally got it 
all done though, and up until late last year that was the "work from 
home" solution during COVID.  We've since moved on, but you can imagine 
the difficulty an 'average user' might have installing Ubuntu in those 
situations where the hardware is not default compatible and needs 
'technical experience' to find the solution.  And that solution worked 
for FT job but might not work the next day for new people.

>
> The current default GUI of Ubuntu desktop is not very user friendly.

I think you need to justify this argument.  The Ubuntu desktop *is* 
quite user friendly nowadays, and with an assortment of other DEs to use 
with flavors of Ubuntu, there's other UIs they can use.


>
> But, it is for certain that if we want to increase the user base of 
> Ubuntu desktop then we have to make it (GUI, etc.) easy to use just 
> like Windows or even easier than Windows.


It's not just a GUI/UI issue, there's legal issues and concerns, and 
'hardware' level concerns from certain hardware that make this a large 
hurdle.  Not to mention the long-standing compatibility and marketing 
agreements between Microsoft and off the shelf vendors to ship Microsoft.


>
> Regards,
> Amit


Thomas
------

(NOTE: The statements and opinions in the above email, unless otherwise 
stated, do not reflect any specific role or leadership position I hold, 
nor any positions I hold as a developer or elsewhere - the roles are 
mentioned here which I have only to reflect the scope of my 'reach' and 
observations)

Ubuntu Member
Ask Ubuntu Moderator
Lubuntu Council Member and Lubuntu Team Lead
Ubuntu Core Developer
Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Member
Ubuntu Server Team Member
Ubuntu Community Council Member
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