[ubuntu-uk] Where Ubuntu falls short

[Rob Beard]

John Matthews wrote:
> People do want a work out of the box machine, and Ubuntu isnt totally 
> out of the box, it does need other bits and pieces added, and unless you 
> know that, it doesnt work how most people are used to having a machine 
> work. 
<snip>

Actually this is a common misconception.  A default installation of 
Windows XP from an original installation CD doesn't come with much.  You 
get the OS, Internet Explorer, and one or two apps (Media Player, 
Notepad, Wordpad, Paint, Windows Messenger, Outlook Express*).  Things 
like Flash, Office etc are all added afterwards not to mention probably 
a whole load of drivers which are required.  On newer hardware you can 
also find that you may need a driver disk to detect things like hard 
drives before you get Windows installed.

* Bear in mind, Windows Messenger is out of date and has been replaced 
with Windows Live Messenger and Outlook Express doesn't work as well as 
it used to with things like Hotmail.  Great at the time but it's been 
replaced by newer apps.

I presume what you're getting at is a PC bought from a shop with Windows 
pre-installed has everything added including usually these days a trial 
version of Office 2007 which will work for about 20 times and then 
expire (yes I know, pretty lousy but this is what Microsoft do these 
days) .  This isn't a fair comparison though to just installing Ubuntu 
from a CD.  It's also a valid argument that Ubuntu comes pre-installed 
with a Media Player, Web Browser, E-Mail client, and OpenOffice.org.  
Installing Flash and extra codecs is fairly straight forward.  When you 
go to a site which requires Flash is prompts to install it, when you try 
and play a media file it prompts to install the codecs.
> Unless you spend a lot of time reading through the pages and pages 
> of the Ubuntu wiki, you wouldnt know that there are extra repositories 
> that you need, to get certain things that you have already installed on 
> a Windows machine. I went for months before I got shown about medibuntu. 
> The forum helps in some respects but you get told on there, read the 
> wiki, or plough through searches on the forum, and then come back and 
> ask, if you cant get it to work.
>   
You don't need Medibuntu, you can get the codecs from the standard 
repositories.  Sure I do add repositories myself for things such as Wine 
and VirtualBox but not everyone needs to do this.  It's the same for 
Windows though, you have to download extra codecs unless all you're 
playing is MP3 and WMV/WMA media files.
> I wanted to try get connected apart from my network at home through 
> wireless, you cannot do that without knowing how to use the terminal, 
> dongles from any of the main mobile carriers, wont work, just by 
> plugging it in, so no wireless outside of the house. I had to get told 
> about Bluetooth and Joiku spot, but Joiku spot wouldnt work with my 8.04 
> version, but it does now.
>   
Depends on which version of Ubuntu you have.  I have a Vodafone Pay and 
Go 3G dongle, cost about £40 from the Vodafone store.  I plugged it in 
on Ubuntu 9.04 and about 10 seconds later I was prompted for what my 
provider was from a list of pre-defined providers (which covered ALL the 
networks in the UK and others too).  Now plugging the dongle in I can 
get online in seconds (subject to reception, not a problem with Ubuntu, 
the same happens on Windows).  My dad's Three soap on a rope style modem 
also works fine.

Now on Vista, I had to install the Vodafone Mobile Connect software 
which took about a minute or two and I have to wait for it to load up 
when I plug the dongle in.

With regards to wireless, my network adaptor (Intel Wireless) was 
detected straight away and just works (tm).  The same goes for my 
Netgear USB dongle too.  I have also tried various other machines with 
different wireless chipsets and many of them just work out of the box.

Granted on Ubuntu 8.04 there isn't native support but I could argue that 
only in the last year has the dongle prices come down closer to what 
most people can afford (those Three and O2 ones are getting really cheap 
now!).
> Each upgrade, could essentially cause the computer not to work. I went 
> from partitioning on 8.04 working to upgrading to 8.10, and not working. 
> My only visit to the London Lug and two people working on the machine 
> couldnt get it to work, froze the minute it got to the log in screen, 
> uninstalled the installed from a different cd, not a chance, then 9.10 
> came along, and it works again, but without a lot of the desktop extras. 
> Its the graphics card its not good enough. I have to thank Michael 
> Fletcher for spending quite a lot of time on the phone and pc to pc 
> working with it to get it to work. Same with adding Ubuntu onto my 
> netbook, it came with Linux lite, that took a while, and a lot of work 
> to get it how it is now. Thanks to Michael again.
>   
Do you mean 9.04 or 9.10 (which isn't out yet, only in Alpha?).

Granted some hardware can be poorly supported and things can break from 
one release to another.  But again, seriously how many people upgrade 
Windows, most just keep the PC until it gets too old and slow, dump it 
and buy a new one with a newer version of Windows.  I'd say only the 
tech savvy would normally bother to upgrade to a later version of 
Windows, most just don't care, XP works so why upgrade to Vista when 
they could buy another machine.

I wouldn't even consider a Windows to Windows version upgrade.  It's 
also been publicly stated by Microsoft that a Windows to Windows 7 
upgrade isn't possible for the European version.  I dare say they could 
make it possible but just can't be bothered.

> There is something to Ubuntu not being a contender like Windows and Mac, 
> so many people take their Linux machines back, because they cant get it 
> to connect to their internet connection, and that is before you even 
> start with everything else. When I got my little netbook from the shop, 
> they warned me, you do realise it most likely wont work, keep the 
> receipt. This particular shop no longer stocks this netbook with Linux, 
> because they had so many bought back.
>   
I'd say that's bad training on the staff's part.  Many people do get on 
with netbooks, a lot of people can't afford the ridiculous prices for 
Apple gear and I've known Windows machines to have dodgy wireless software.
> Plus, my experience in learning the shell script. I really do want to 
> learn it, and its been causing me so much frustration.
>   
That could be the same for anything.  I learnt how to drive and found it 
really frustrating at times.  I learnt DOS batch scripting over many 
years and found some of it frustrating.  The thing is, don't expect to 
be able to run before you can walk.

If you want to learn bash scripting there are many people on the list 
who could help.  If you're stuck on something don't be afraid to ask.

I'm looking at starting to learn C, I've tried it in the past and got 
fed up because I couldn't do the simple things on it that I could do in 
Basic, but this time I'm going to try and persevere with it and if I get 
stuck I'll ask.
> That is my experience so far with Linux, but I'm still here, trying, 
> 'very trying' some would say, lol.
>
>   
Well it's good that you're trying.  The thing is, there are LUGs, there 
is the Ubuntu-UK mailing list, there are resources out there.  In fact I 
bet a lot of the resources for Linux and Ubuntu are far better than some 
of the advice you'll get from the local 'PC expert' from down the pub 
who's just had a Windows XP PC at home for maybe a year or two and is 
now a self considered expert.
> I wish I was doing this at school age, would probably be a lot easier.
>   
I wish they would teach computing at school rather than how to use Word, 
Excel etc.  When I was at school they taught Word Processing, 
Spreadsheets and Databases (on Wordstar, Wordperfect, MS Word for DOS, 
MS Word for Windows, Excel and other apps).  I can now take what I know 
and apply it to just about any Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Database 
application.  Sure there are differences but the fact is, I know how to 
do the tasks and it's just a case of working out how they apply to the 
application in question.
> This is also not a winge, its my experience as a novice.
>   
Fair enough.

Right, I'm off to have a pizza and watch a film on my Windows PC :-D 
(only because my other half's PC is the one nearest to the telly).

Rob