[ubuntu-uk] What do non-techies like the most about Ubuntu?

[Alan Pope]

Hi Matthew,

On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 07:26:14AM +0100, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
> I realise that this isn't personal, so I'll jump in with my thoughts  
> again... ;)
> 

Phew. I realised that someone could take my last mail badly if they read it 
before having their first food/coffee/cigarette/brandy of the day. :)

> produce a fix, I'm told that I'm not allowed to deploy it because it  
> hasn't been tested.
> 

Good point. I wonder if those in power would have the same attitude if it 
were *their* PC that was exhibiting the problem ;)

> 4) Clear your temporary internet files
> 

Oooh, good one, I'd forgotten that chestnut!

> Google simply do not work.  An example of this is the current issue I  
> and about 20,000 other across the globe have encountered with SVCHost  
> causing the CPU to run at 100%. 

o/ Me included. One of my customers provides me with a Windows laptop to 
remotely administer their system. I booted up on Monday after a week away 
from work and did exactly what you said. I walked away and it was fine a 
couple of hours later after the updates had applied and it had rebooted 
itself.

> By contrast, in Edgy I was frequently receiving an error with  
> Gnome-Settings-Demon failing to start and hogging my CPU on startup.   
> I found on the Ubuntu forums the fix: apt-get update/upgrade and it  
> started working immediately.
> 

Of course Linux isn't perfect, there are times Linux and Ubuntu apps break 
and there may be some difficulty getting them fixed. One big difference (to 
get back on topic ;) ) between Linux and Windows I find is accessibility of 
the developers.

I can go online and via irc can contact one of a number of developers 
personally (if they don't mind), if I report bugs or contact a mailing list 
often the developers themselves respond. I contrast this with the Windows 
world where I find many armchair experts voicing their opinion of problems, 
but I rarely stumble upon a developer.

Last week I attended UDS which was (as the name suggests - Ubuntu Developer 
Summit) a developer overload. Over a hundred Ubuntu (and upstream) 
developers in one place! There were a few occasions where I asked someone 
"who'd be the best person to help me with XYZ?". I got passed to a couple of 
people and very quickly (like within a minute or two) I was sat down talking 
to someone who could really help me. Does that exist in the Windows world?

Cheers,
Al.