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<p>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).<br>
</p>
<p>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).<br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/20/22 11:38, Amit wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAFf+5zjj7GKgjjL+J-rs_LwOP4EXDcjgz1isubNKwnG+JJCBCA@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="auto">Hi,
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I was thinking about how to increase the user
base of Ubuntu desktop.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">More and more people will use Ubuntu desktop if
it (GUI, etc.) is easy to use.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAFf+5zjj7GKgjjL+J-rs_LwOP4EXDcjgz1isubNKwnG+JJCBCA@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto">First timers and older people should also find
Ubuntu desktop easy to use (having very short learning curve).</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Microsoft Windows is there on about 90% of all
(computer) systems mainly because it is very easy to use.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">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.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>And herein lies my beginning of countering your statements.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The only other competitor was Apple, which in the timespan
Windows grew had a lag before it had any significant market share.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAFf+5zjj7GKgjjL+J-rs_LwOP4EXDcjgz1isubNKwnG+JJCBCA@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">The current default GUI of Ubuntu desktop is not
very user friendly.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAFf+5zjj7GKgjjL+J-rs_LwOP4EXDcjgz1isubNKwnG+JJCBCA@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">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.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAFf+5zjj7GKgjjL+J-rs_LwOP4EXDcjgz1isubNKwnG+JJCBCA@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Regards,</div>
<div dir="auto">Amit</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Thomas<br>
------</p>
<p>(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)<br>
</p>
<p>Ubuntu Member<br>
Ask Ubuntu Moderator<br>
Lubuntu Council Member and Lubuntu Team Lead<br>
Ubuntu Core Developer<br>
Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Member<br>
Ubuntu Server Team Member<br>
Ubuntu Community Council Member<br>
</p>
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