So world and dog is nagging on about Ubuntu, how great it is and how they are switching from <insert anything on the planet> to Ubuntu.
I happened to have a spare 300gig drive lying around so I gave 6.06 a go. My machine is over 2 years old, its practically from the ark, you'd expect things to Just Work.
After install, screen resolution is absolutely dismal, slow refresh rate and random crashes while trying to set to a better resolutoin. Already here you've lost a large chunk of users.
Anyway, so I go off looking on Google using Firefox, it opens up with the familiar look of Firefox complete with Mycroft search box, except the search box does nothing by default, you can type into it, hit enter but nothing happens, by default it doesn't search, have to go fiddle with it to get it working.
Came across a post, that points to another post that points to Wiki for getting ATI cards going. I basically had to do this in a terminal:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r) sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx sudo depmod -a sudo aticonfig --initial sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv
and then reboot.
Yes, this distro is going places if it can't even support a crap old ATI Radeon card out of the box and require new users to do stuff in terminals just to get rid of a headache inducing low refresh rate.
Get Real, your grandmother is not going to do this. Give her a Mac and the thing just works.
Sure I'm not the target demographic - but I think you had a bad experience. I installed breezy on some dated hardware (self built 2xp3, nvidia geforce2 mx, etc) and it Just Worked for me. With the exception of some wifi issues, which later turned out to be a problem with my wifi dsl router rather than the software shipped with the distro.
I agree with gran's using mac's though...
Even when the bare minimum like just the display works, the default ubuntu is still useless.
My full experience was:
1) Run install twice cos it just crashed first time, lots of nasty python errors
2) boot into it, instant headache from refresh rate, so move over to the mac to search a solution
3) piss about on the terminal, reboot
4) try to play a mp3, it doesnt have the codec
5) try to play a divx, it doesnt have the codec
6) back to firefox - which again defaulted to not searching through mycroft
7) read more forums and stuff and have to figure out how to add universe and multiverse repositories - names that are completely and utterly useless in what their purpose are in general
8) eventually found easybuntu and automatix - more pissing about with repositories
9) more pissing about on the command line
10) easybuntu crashed 3 tiimes but eventually worked
Only then did I consider the install to be done, because only then could do even the bare basic things like play a media file, it is totally crippled as a desktop in its default - even 100% working - state.
Now about 100% working state, as of now, booting the Ubuntu drive brings up a standard mult-boot menu, but it does not boot my XP correctly, I have to actually go into the BIOS and change boot order to get XP working. Lame
Just so its clear, I did all this and personally i have no problem with that, i got the OS installed, all the above and Xgl/Compiz in less than 2 hours and it mostly works now, even with all this unsupported 3rd party stuff.
But to compare the experience with a Mac machine as seems to be the current theme of the week is just idiotic.
This, in my opinion, is why Linux is still a while away from becoming mainstream. There's too much hacking about to get things to work. From what I recall from the last time I installed Windows, the same there! Install nforce chipset drivers, install the nvidia drivers, etc. It's a pain. Your grandmother isn't going to do that either. (Every family has "that guy" that fixes Windows machines...)
That's the one thing that Apple got right. Own hardware. Own software. Limited hardware/software compatibility issues. If any at all. They even managed to get both 32-bit (Intel chips) and 64-bit (G4/G5) versions of their OS onto one installation. Go Apple!
But, alas, the problem with Apple's market share and market penetration is the fact that their hardware is expensive. If it was 25% cheaper, their penetration would be much higher.
A bit anecdotal but i think relevant, my girlfriend is a complete technophobe, she uses a computer for photoshop, hotmail and LJ. She gets on ok with her windows box but if it gives her problems she cant fix it.
So I gave her a old G4 powermac, 800mhz, here and Tiger on it and said use that, the transition was so easy she had a few questions but once she got the basics down she was good to go on her own and she is happier than with her XP box.
Next week she is buying her own iMac, eventhough I told her I can give her a PC solution that is 1/2 the price and would allow her to buy a sexy new camera for the same money, but she insists on getting the mac because it works a hell of a lot better than what she is used to and it comes with what she needs - except of course photoshop.
If I'd given her a Ubuntu machine, even one that I carefully installed and prepared to be Just Right, it would have been disastrous.
Ive been saying this for years, even when i was doing kernel level hacking with the 1.x tree of linux.
linux still has a long long way to go with regards to UI experience and overall ease.
Most of these issues relate to
a) Poor package management (I don't know why the hell Ubuntu don't just follow the Debian package management trends which work well)
b) The very poor use of XWindows in general. XWindows was just never designed to be used in a desktop/single-user domain. It's a client-server application because in the days when it was hacked together thats how most terminals operated. The idea is archaic and just causes complication.
Honestly, someone needs to come up with an entirely new GUI.
I'm a former Windows user, turned Linux user (short time, about 2 months).
As most Windows users would atest, in installing Windows, you had to go through the obstacle course of install, patch, find driver, patch, more install, patch, etc, etc until everything was setup correctly. In my experience, Windows never "just worked". But, I think some folks trying Ubuntu have the impression that it will "just work", partly because the hype surrounding Ubuntu (some of it well-earned) makes it seem like this computing nirvana.
Installing Ubuntu (on a pretty old P3 800mhz machine) was easy and "just worked", if you take it at face value as open-source software. It installed fine, auto-detected all hardware, updated all software to current versions, etc. It was the most painless OS install I had ever done.
But, and this threw me for a loop which it is a lot of other folks, it didn't play mp3's, flash, wmv/avi/divx, etc. It was later I found out it doesn't install proprietary-format things. This seems to be a down-played or "hushed" fact that fans don't say much about when touting Ubuntu as the next best OS since the Abacus.
So, you end up doing the "Windows Two-Step" again, trying to find all the necessary lib's and such to implement that stuff. Easyubuntu tries to make it easy, basically running a script that contacts the repositories to auto-load all the necessary stuff. It worked for me, but I have heard other complaints from folks it was less successful for. But, I've heard even more complaints from Automatix users, so I steered clear of that.
Another thing I found annoying about Ubuntu was it was so slow. When using WinXP (SP2) on my P3, I had the services and such tweaked to run smooth and seemlessly for a stand-alone desktop/internet machine. I played Tremulous (freeware 3d game based on Quake 3 source), and it ran smooth. I installed Ubuntu, and not only was the desktop laggy, but I installed Tremulous and it was laggy, too. Plus, the game was perpetually dark no matter how much fiddling I did with gamma in the game or on the desktop.
This leads to the other hushed or down-played Ubuntu fact...if you're coming from Mac or Windows, expect to use the command-line terminal more in Linux/Ubuntu then you've ever used before on those OS'. Even with their major focus on user-friendly, desktop-oriented service, you'll still find yourself cracking open the terminal to type in funky console commands. And not just a couple words...we're talking 20 word sentences and such.
Although, it is on par with Windows, in that in Windows, you have to go dig up out-of-the-way system files to tweak on to get better performance. In Ubuntu, I had to go tweak the /etc/fstab (filesystem table...which mounts drives and such) to get it to recognize various drives (IE: my Windows NTFS partition).
I liked how Unbuntu came pre-loaded with useful software -- Office apps, Multimedia, Web-Browsers -- but some of it's annoying. The way Ubnutu is built, you can't easily get rid of pre-loads you don't want to use. If you hop into "Synaptic" (the GUI for the console "apt-get" which handles install/uninstall from servers called "repositories") the system threatens to uninstall the whole Ubuntu desktop if you try to uninstall just one little app... And the courts complained about Microsoft bundling software... Pre-loaded software is fine, but let folks get rid of crap they don't want.
In installing things, I found that a lot of Linux apps offered as "Ubuntu Certified" and otherwise were still console-based. After getting Ubuntu, naturally, I went to the repositories like a kid in a candy store and installed a bunch of games. Out of 20 games I installed, only took the time to install an icon on my GUI "app start" menu. I had to double-check to make sure I installed the others, then spent 30 minutes screwing around with the file-manager and console to get the others to run. Some didn't want to run. You'd click the icon in your start menu, and it wouldn't do anything. Come to find out, if you run it from console, you see a whole litany of error messages telling you why it can't run. Why can't clicking the icon let you know there's errors? Stupid.
A lot of what you install with Ubuntu requires some other library or such get installed in addition to make it work. When using apt-get or Synaptic, at least this was somewhat painless, since it would figure it out for you. But woe be to you if you get somebody's package off the net to install and run. Some developers offer really neat stuff, but they're lax in their documentation on installation or library dependancies. So, without it coming from apt-get, you're stuck trying to figure out what's preventing it from running (gee, kinda like Windows sometimes!)
Anyways, Ubuntu has done a lot to bridge the gap on Linux human usability, so much so that I decided to give up on Windows expensive "mother may I" BS. While I'm a bit frustrated at times with Ubuntu/Linux, at least I'm not spending hundreds of dollars for buggy software to do so, or being treated like a criminal that has to re-verify his software key every time I log onto the net.
Ubuntu/Linux is also a polarized affair with software, because some really cool developers like using it, but since Linux is open-source, major software/hardware manufacturers won't build drivers and such for it. So, you can find things like a really awesome 3D desktop environment for Linux (which was available for Linux before Vista came out), but you can't find a way to get your latest hardware to work...until some dev's get frustrated and reverse-engineer one to add to the repositories. Going back to the lack of mp3, flash, etc support in Ubuntu, sure it's frustrating, but it's also frustrating that there's so much proprietary software out there. It's like someone telling you you can't speak English unless you pay for it. The Linux crowd feels the foundations of software -- software languages, drivers, formats, etc -- should be freely developed by the people, much like a speaking language, but that hardware and software companies can then use those foundations to build things they charge for it they choose. This is so un-Windows and un-Apple-like that it throws folks for a loop I guess.
So, I personally feel Ubuntu is totally ready to replace your grandma's computer, if all she does is surf the net, read email, write letters, etc...you know, all the "routine" stuff folks do on a computer. However, she should have a linux-savvy person nearby to help get her mp3's and divx stuff setup, and other weird things going just in case. And if she's a gamer, she should just buy a PS3/Xbox/Wii and stop complaining about Linux not being a gaming OS.
In the long run, I think Ubuntu has broken major ground with Linux, even if it's just drawing more attention to Linux as an arguably viable desktop solution. Everyone's grown up on a Windows or Mac computer, so there's growing pains learning how Linux works. But, in using those OS', folks have been conditioned that they have to spend an arm and a leg for their software. Ubuntu is trying to change that approach.
I do feel that Ubuntu will be a as good, if not better than Windows or Mac OS, since it will become whatever the community wishes it to be. But, I'm concerned with Ubuntu, because it's developed by a corporate-funded entity (Mark Shuttleworth & Canonical). That adds much needed coordination and control to the the development, but I'm afraid Ubuntu may eventually turn into a pay-for-use or subscription support/update service once lots of folks are locked into using it. IE: I'm concerned about Shuttleworth's true motivations. I'm worried he may just be using Ubuntu as a long-term business opportunity, getting folks sucked into the whole "it's actively developed, but still free!" mentality then spring some weird cash-strapping suprise on folks in the end. "And now that you all use Ubuntu, you have to pay me $100/mo or the special code we built into it will reformat your hard-drive! Surprise!"
Wow...Big Business scams have made me so jaded...LOL!