Ubuntu, why it is crap

[frankly frankie]

The last few pages of this thread have been about one person's bad experience with one hardware/software combination.

True - but there are plenty more of us out there.
I just gave up moaning about Linux (in general) and Ubuntu (in particular) years ago.  Lost cause.

[inc]

I just gave up moaning about Linux (in general) and Ubuntu (in particular) years ago.  Lost cause.

Linux is certainly not a lost cause, most of the worlds servers run it, the internet  runs on  it, Android will soon be the biggest mobile OS and most of the worlds supercomputers run it. MS has a monopoly on the OS supplied with a new PC hence most people just use it. In recent years hardware and driver software is becoming more LInux friendly. Intel produce open drivers for their GPUs and since AMD bought ATI they have been releasing specifications to allow open drivers for ATI/AMD video cards, NVidia are the only major graphics card producer dragging their feet although they do produce a LInux driver but it is proprietary so can't be included on the installation media.. Following on from Intel most wifi hardware producers now have open firmware. All current Linux distros should work out of the box on most machines. I did a clean install recently ( not Ubuntu !!)   on a new SSD, it was from a live CD and took 3 min 20 seconds to install, another five minutes to add other repros and  install Flashplayer and VLC with all the missing codecs and I had a complete system that will do almost anything anyone will need. No nerdy stuff needed.

[Adam]

I'd agree with the above.  Doing a new install on a decent PC isn't generally the problem, which it might have been a few years ago.  The problem arises when you want to do something different.  For instance I was looking at trying to get a Vodafone 3G dongle working on a notebook.  

If it was Windows, there's be an exe file to run which would install everything, and within a minute, it would be working.  If it's Ubuntu, I've got to follow this little lot of instructions:-

Download the Ubuntu.tgz compressed archive to a temporary directory on your machine with the download button.

Assuming that we are inside your temporary directory uncompress the archive.

$> tar xvfz Ubuntu.tgz

This will produce the following directory and files on your machine.

$> ls -l

$> Ubuntu/

$> Ubuntu/ozerocdoff_0.4-2_i386.deb

$> Ubuntu/usb-modeswitch_0.9.7_i386.deb

$ >Ubuntu/vodafone-mobile-connect_2.20.01-1_all.deb

$> Ubuntu/INSTALL_UBUNTU.TXT
Installing Packages

We are going to install the packages in reverse order. In other words if a package depends on another package we install the dependancy first.

Install the usb_modeswitch package.

$> sudo dpkg -i usb-modeswitch_0.9.7_i386.deb

Install ozerocdoff package.

$> sudo dpkg -i ozerocdoff_0.4-2_i386.deb

Install Vodafone Mobile Connect and it's dependancies

$> sudo aptitude install wvdial hal usb-modeswitch ozerocdoff python-twisted python-serial python-sqlite python-tz python-gobject python-dbus python-cairo python-crypto python-gtk2 python-gnome2 python-gnome2-extras lsb-release python-glade2

$> sudo dpkg -i vodafone-mobile-connect_2.20.01-1_all.deb
Running the Application

To run the applicatoin you can run from the command line in normal or logging mode with the commands:

$> vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux

$> vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux-debug

To start the application from your menu, choose applications, then internet.


Not quite as easy, especially as it will also keep requiring me to enter access passwords to uncompress and install things.

[border-rider]

no, there's a Voda Australia ap that just does it.   No drama.  Even works with non-Voda networks

[Adam]

That could be useful.  It's just a shame that the above string of commands is what's on the Vodafone website (which isn't their main one, but a techie one).  And in fact that's 100% better than it was a year ago, when it was far more convoluted.

[bikesdontfloat]

Having recently upgraded my pc (the only original parts left are the case, case fan, one hard drive and the DVD player/writer) Uncle Bill has decided that I am stealing the food out of the mouths of his and Melinda's children to the tune of a OEM copy of XP Home Basic.  Having spotted my crime of having put new bits in a 6 year old PC Uncle Bill killed my computer.

No problem I thought,  I'll install some flavour of Linux to get me up and running.

A few minutes of wibbling around on the laptop and I've got a bootable usb with the latest distro of Ubuntu (it's the Narwhal release - I had to go for it really) and we're set.  Stick it in the PC, change BIOS settings so the PC will boot off the USB and away we go.

Everything looks promising, it looks like we're getting somewhere until.... weird black and white patterns all over the screen.  OK thinks I, maybe this is something to do with the graphics card not being supported.  5 minutes later, graphics card out and the monitor plumbed in to the motherboard we try again.

All looks promising, the live disk is up and running and after a few attempts we seem to have installed Natty Narwhal on the virgin, new SATA drive.  Reboot to load up from the hard drive and all seems to go fine until the monitor goes blank and tells me "Mode not supported".  A google suggest that there is an option for booting to a safe mode so I can fix the problem but so far none of these suggestions has got me into a safe mode.

No worries thinks I - Ubuntu isn't the only game in town so I get my trusty USB stick and load it up with the shiniest version of Fedora instead.  Feeling optimistic the graphics card goes back in and off we go.  So far so good.

No problems this time, the live USB fires up straight off and we're feeling optimistic.  I click on the handy install icon, click through a few screens until the bit where we decide where to install Fedora.  We're scanning drives and we wait......and we wait......and we wait......make a cup of tea.....wait.  Ok lets restart - exactly the same until we get to the same point - same again.  Next time round we choose the option for installing in weird non-standard set-ups, just in case.

This looks promising, Fedora picks up on all the drives, identifies all the partitions on the old drive, surely it doesn't need to scan anything - it's seen it all already.  Choose to install on the new drive (overwriting the Ubuntu install) - here we go.  And we watch the little round time passing icon, and we wait, and wait, and wait.

So no joy there either.  I won't let it beat me, there's plenty of distros left and I've got a whole weekend ahead to swear at the computer so I will get it working.  But lets be honest this isn't a slick user experience.

I'm not a "computer" person but for a decade or so I've been the one keeping the computers working at the small business I work for so I understand at least some of the basics.  I've moved on from Windows 98 & Me to a mix of XP, Vista and Server 2003, at home I've got various flavours of XP and VISTA so I'm familiar with the evils of Microsoft but no problem they have put in my way has been this irratating. 

This isn't meant to be doing down Linux - I can see its inherent good and I will be sticking with it (unless I can persuade my BiL to fix me up with a free copy of Windows 7, which I'm pretty confident will install without fuss).  It's more of a plea of understanding from those who don't seem to understand why people may have complaints about the Linux experience.

[fred the great]

It seems to me from reading this thread that those people who have had Linux issues are the ones who must have the most recent version installed and fiddle too much. If you meet a problem with the latest release let Ubuntu sort it out, they're the experts who designed it and are quick and anxious to sort it out.

If you leave them alone though, all previous Ubuntu OS's just work straight from the box and always have done for me.

As to the latest version, forget it until the issues get sorted. I happily use 10.04 which is updated as and when updates become available. such updates, unlike Microsoft, have never slowed down my  computer or created any problems.

[Andrij]

Natty Narwhal server edition installed, from scratch, in less than half an hour this morning.  I confess I had to do it twice, but that's because I did something stupid first time around.

I'll upgrade my dual-boot machine (xubuntu) later today, but will still wait a bit before upgrading my main machine.
 

[ScumOfTheRoad]

If it was Windows, there's be an exe file to run which would install everything, and within a minute, it would be working.  If it's Ubuntu, I've got to follow this little lot of instructions:-

This is quite a significant point actually - and deserves some deeper consideration. I have tree replies for you - pleasse give each reply some separate consideration.


a) you're referring to Windows drivers being available for lots of hardware. Being slightly sarcastic here, that's part of the Microsoft business model - you as a manufacturer pay MS to certify your hardware, and that's part of MS revenue stream.

b) You complain about having to enter passwords - well that's a positive advantage. Most MS Windows installs simply grant the ordinary user administrative privileges - specifically because ordinary user compains endlessly about not being able to install x,y,z without typing in those pesky passwords or askign an administrator. But hold on there - that's precisely why the Windows world is rampant with viruses, malware, spyware.

c) Don;t wish to be rude, but you crow about there being 'one exe file to install 3G drivers'
I give you two counter cases - my works laptop is an excellent Lenovo Thinkpad, who sponsor us.
Dual core, more RAM than you can shake a stick as and a lovely display. As Vodafone also sponsor us, laptop has a 3G card and a SIM. But you cannot use the 3G card.
Why not? Because this is a 64 bit laptop and we use windows XP 64 bit professional.
There is no .exe for 3G cards for 64bit XP. None.
I also have a 3 Mifi - Huawei mobile access point. Plug in its USB lead and the Mifi carries onboard drivers in a .exe file. You guessed it - there is no 64 bit .exe file.

I will hammer this point home - you only get this .exe file for a small subset of operating systems which people around the world run. Even in the MS world not everyone runs 32 bit windows - and what version are you going to stick with because those .exe files make your life easy?
NT? XP? Vista? Windows 7?

[frankly frankie]

Needing a password to farkle with my own computer in my own home is completely ridiculous.  I might add I always, on principle, do OS instals without any internet connection.

I just gave up moaning about Linux (in general) and Ubuntu (in particular) years ago.  Lost cause.

Linux is certainly not a lost cause, most of the worlds servers run it, the internet  runs on  it, ...

Sure - on the desktop, I thought we were talking about.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Needing a password to farkle with my own computer in my own home is completely ridiculous. 

No.  Allowing the install of privileged software without any sort of check is what leads to malware being so easily installed.

[inc]

Needing a password to farkle with my own computer in my own home is completely ridiculous.  I might add I always, on principle, do OS instals without any internet connection.

You can set auto login for users anyway ie no password needed.   But needing a password for admin  is a simple way of separating the OS from the user, as a user it is not possible to trash your OS, the user account yes but not the main system. It is simple to create a new user account. It also stops any malware getting access to the OS from a user account.

[inc]

 I won't let it beat me, there's plenty of distros left and I've got a whole weekend ahead to swear at the computer so I will get it working.  But lets be honest this isn't a slick user experience.

Was the video card you removed Nvidia and the onboard card also NVidia ?

[Greenbank]

Needing a password to farkle with my own computer in my own home is completely ridiculous. 

No.  Allowing the install of privileged software without any sort of check is what leads to malware being so easily installed.

The problem is that most people lack the sufficient knowledge to spot the difference between something genuine that needs raised privs in order to be installed, and the malware requesting raised privs to be installed.

Especially as malware spam comes with helpful things like:

"Click on the attachment to see the details of the package we are trying to deliver to you, in order to view it you may need to click 'Yes' to any popup boxes that appear."

If an OS could tell the difference between genuine software and malware then it wouldn't need to ask, it could just stop the malware regardless. For a non-certified/signed bit of software it can't.

[Adam]

If it was Windows, there's be an exe file to run which would install everything, and within a minute, it would be working.  If it's Ubuntu, I've got to follow this little lot of instructions:-

This is quite a significant point actually - and deserves some deeper consideration. I have tree replies for you - pleasse give each reply some separate consideration.

a) you're referring to Windows drivers being available for lots of hardware. Being slightly sarcastic here, that's part of the Microsoft business model - you as a manufacturer pay MS to certify your hardware, and that's part of MS revenue stream.

b) You complain about having to enter passwords - well that's a positive advantage. Most MS Windows installs simply grant the ordinary user administrative privileges - specifically because ordinary user compains endlessly about not being able to install x,y,z without typing in those pesky passwords or askign an administrator. But hold on there - that's precisely why the Windows world is rampant with viruses, malware, spyware.

c) Don;t wish to be rude, but you crow about there being 'one exe file to install 3G drivers'
I give you two counter cases - my works laptop is an excellent Lenovo Thinkpad, who sponsor us.
Dual core, more RAM than you can shake a stick as and a lovely display. As Vodafone also sponsor us, laptop has a 3G card and a SIM. But you cannot use the 3G card.
Why not? Because this is a 64 bit laptop and we use windows XP 64 bit professional.
There is no .exe for 3G cards for 64bit XP. None.
I also have a 3 Mifi - Huawei mobile access point. Plug in its USB lead and the Mifi carries onboard drivers in a .exe file. You guessed it - there is no 64 bit .exe file.

I will hammer this point home - you only get this .exe file for a small subset of operating systems which people around the world run. Even in the MS world not everyone runs 32 bit windows - and what version are you going to stick with because those .exe files make your life easy?
NT? XP? Vista? Windows 7?

Fair comments, but in response I'd say 64 bit XP is fairly non mainstream, hence the issue about no drivers.  I've got 64 bit Windows 7 and drivers are more prevalent.

The point is that standard things should be easy to install on any system. And with the widespread use of Windows, it is easier on Windows.

You're right about security and passwords, but when it's an admin account it gets tedious.

Even with nice a GUI interface, under Ubuntu, if you want to add stuff, you can be forced to get involved with a command prompt far more than Windows.

However, if you just want a PC for browsing and simple stuff, I can definitely see the appeal of Ubuntu.  I'm happy to use it on my notebook, but I won't be getting rid of Windows 7 on my PC!

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Adam, thanks for listening and I agree with what you say also.

Maybe as a compromise what we should say is that desktop computers  (*) really still aren't at as advanced a stage as the manufacturers would like you believe. Windows, as a for instance, does do a good job at hiding the internal working of the system and abstracting the system to a desktop with windows/mice/pointer. But you do end up getting down to the nitty gritty of understanding BIOSes etc. on any desktop OS

(*) I'm not enlarging the discussion to embedded stuff

(**) the WIMPS interface is changing too - tablets are with us, and I would say people treat them more like mebedded devices - they're expected to boot up without problems, but if something does freeze up etc. you just power it down then back up

[Adam]

Funny you should mention tablets, as I spent a bit of time yesterday doing some research on them.  

Reviews, especially of the Android ones, seem to make the point about regular freezing requiring powering off & on, and it just seems to be accepted.  It does seem as though the operating system is being asked to do more than expected -  which I guess isn't surprising for something originally designed to dial a phone number!

[simonp]

Android’s OS is Linux.

I think the problem is that dialling a phone is much harder than doing what PCs traditionally do, in fact.

[inc]

Funny you should mention tablets, as I spent a bit of time yesterday doing some research on them.  

Reviews, especially of the Android ones, seem to make the point about regular freezing requiring powering off & on, and it just seems to be accepted.  It does seem as though the operating system is being asked to do more than expected -  which I guess isn't surprising for something originally designed to dial a phone number!

Google are aware of the limitations of Android on tablets and have received a lot of criticism for only releasing the source code for 2.2  to selected OEMs to try to control the quality of the final product but they are working on it for the next version Android 3.0 Platform Highlights | Android Developers

[TimC]

I've persevered with Ubuntu - 11.04 64-bit on my dual-boot Win7 laptop, and now a working 10.10 on the old Sony Vaio, and I have to say I quite like it in both the Unity and Gnome iterations. On balance, I'd say the old Gnome desktop is easier to come to terms with for a Windows addict like me. Unity works in a rather strange way which I haven't really got yet. However, there are still issues on both computers - it's taken bloody ages to get Flash working on the 64-bit natty machine, I still can't get Google Earth to install, and I am heartily fed up with being asked for my password for every bloody click!! I do understand the security explanation, but this is way OTT. if I administrate my home system, I do want to be trusted once I've completed the initial security screen procedure!

What have I got out of this? Well, I've learned a new appreciation for how good Win7 Professional 64-bit is! I've found a useful way of keeping oldish hardware usable after it gets left behind by the Microsoft juggernaut. I'm impressed that Libre Office has much of the functionality of Office 2010, though - like with much Ubuntu stuff - it has some odd choices of default font sizes and visuals for its various screens. It assumes better eyesight than most people my age have! It also doesn't have (or I haven't found) native software support for the plethora of gadgets that I like to use in association with my computers - Garmins, phones, WHY.

It seems pretty obvious from reading some of the strongly-worded replies here that there are many who passionately believe in Linux and are sensitive to criticism of it, but if the desktop OS is to make the leap from a nerdy-enthusiast oddity to an acceptable alternative to Windows, the issues many have raised must be dealt with. For instance, I see several people suggesting us non-converts are daft for loading the latest iteration and should expect problems, but I've yet to read any justification for that. If it's out there in final release, it should work! If it doesn't, don't release beyond RC status.

Ubuntu is OK - and that's a lot better than my initial feeling about it - but it's not the Windows 7 alternative its proponents may claim. An alternative to XP, yes indeed. But not Win7.

[pcolbeck]

Flash on 64 bit Linux is very iffy. Adobe only released it last Autumn after have dropped support for it at least once. Don't blame Ubuntu blame Adobe it's their software.

[simonp]

A lot of programmers struggle to write 64-bit clean code.  Bad habits you get away with on a 32 bit compiler bite you on 64-bit.

[TimC]

Flash on 64 bit Linux is very iffy. Adobe only released it last Autumn after have dropped support for it at least once. Don't blame Ubuntu blame Adobe it's their software.

It's on and working now, so I'll keep my fingers crossed. If it all gets too difficult, I'll bin Natty 64 and and install the 32-bit version and see if that copes better. But that would be under-utilisation of the hardware, and I'm sure that 64-bit support will rapidly increase and improve, so I'd like to persevere.

[simonp]

The old Dec advert “do not ask when you need 64 bits, ask when you need 33” (or words to that effect) was good, but this shows a fundamental inefficiency with 64 bit computing: you tend to increase both code and working set size when compiling 64 bit.  Many applications actually run slower when compiled for 64-bit, though I have experimented with this for modelling an algorithm designed for a 64-bit DSP processor on x86, and building the binary -m64 rather than -m32 made a factor of 2 difference, roughly.

If you’re doing heavyweight stuff like graphics rendering, then 64-bit can be good.  If you’re doing the normal run of the mill general purpose programming, I’m not so sure.  There is actually very little in a typical program that genuinely needs more than 32 bit int.

[Greenbank]

There is actually very little in a typical program that genuinely needs more than 32 bit int.

So true, we've done lots of analysis on porting our software to 64-bit. Most of the 'reasons' from customers are dubious, since it's faster and smaller when running as a 32-bit process.

What is causing trouble is 32-bit compatability on 64-bit systems, Linux especially, as the 32-bit libraries ours programs rely upon (i.e. libc, etc) are beginning to be neglected as development focus moves to 64-bit.

We do have a few customers that push our software enough that they'd benefit from a native 64-bit version, but only because they want to store >4GB of data in memory in a single process.