The problem with using or advocating Linux(forums.linuxmint.com)
forums.linuxmint.com
The problem with using or advocating Linux
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=159931
11 comments
These are exactly the reasons why I run Windows on my home machine (Linux at work though, I do need to get stuff done).
That said, I was out to lunch this weekend with a friend, and she was frustrated because her new (Windows 8) laptop wouldn't play DVDs - I know it's because Microsoft doesn't ship the codecs anymore, and that I could fix it in 10 minutes by installing VLC, but she's not tech-literate enough to do that, so maybe Windows isn't entirely so far ahead.
That said, I was out to lunch this weekend with a friend, and she was frustrated because her new (Windows 8) laptop wouldn't play DVDs - I know it's because Microsoft doesn't ship the codecs anymore, and that I could fix it in 10 minutes by installing VLC, but she's not tech-literate enough to do that, so maybe Windows isn't entirely so far ahead.
So I'm typing this on a name brand Windows Machine, certainly "over the hill" in both hardware and software.
Its sound worked when it was new, then stopped working. Booting Linux (Suse of a certain older vintage), and sound just works. I'm sure I could spend more time futzing about about with it and it would work, but I've given up after about a day.
Pleas, please, please I am begging the Windows community as a whole and the HP community in particular; get your act together. Really, this is embarrassing.
Its sound worked when it was new, then stopped working. Booting Linux (Suse of a certain older vintage), and sound just works. I'm sure I could spend more time futzing about about with it and it would work, but I've given up after about a day.
Pleas, please, please I am begging the Windows community as a whole and the HP community in particular; get your act together. Really, this is embarrassing.
I use (and enjoy) Mint, but have to agree wholeheartedly with this post. In some ways, it's close to something which I could recommend to non-technical friends and family. But not yet. I hope that future releases will focus more on things like working seamlessly with the hardware, and less on enhancements to the window manager.
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Apple and Microsoft (software vendors) have large teams to make sure things are compatible with certain hardware. Apple, HP, Sony, etc (hardware vendors) have teams to make sure things are compatible with OSX and Windows.
You can't expect to slap a random distro on a random computer and expect 100% of everything to work without some tweaking.
If you want to use a Linux and have everything work without tweaks, buy from a manufacturer that does for Linux what a HP would do for Windows, make sure it all works before it goes out the door. Try System 76 or one of the others.
> You can't expect to slap a random distro on a random computer and expect 100% of everything to work without some tweaking.
Right, and I think most people agree with this. But we can't assent to that and then turn around and claim "Linux is just as user-friendly as Windows/OS X" or "Anybody can use Linux; it just works." It does nobody any good to pretend that Mint (or Ubuntu, or whatever) is yet at the level of Win 7 or OS X in terms of out-of-the-box usability. People who are unequivocally recommending Linux to the average layperson are doing everybody a disservice.
Right, and I think most people agree with this. But we can't assent to that and then turn around and claim "Linux is just as user-friendly as Windows/OS X" or "Anybody can use Linux; it just works." It does nobody any good to pretend that Mint (or Ubuntu, or whatever) is yet at the level of Win 7 or OS X in terms of out-of-the-box usability. People who are unequivocally recommending Linux to the average layperson are doing everybody a disservice.
>buy from a manufacturer that does for Linux what a HP would do for Windows
I should hope not - I have still had issues with broken drivers on HP hardware with the included Windows operating system. In fact, Linux seems to have better drivers in this case.
I should hope not - I have still had issues with broken drivers on HP hardware with the included Windows operating system. In fact, Linux seems to have better drivers in this case.
System 76 is great, but too expensive to be a good recommendation for most friends and family. As far as hardware support: I'm not so troubled when some exotic device doesn't work, but I'm talking about HDMI here, it is THE standard media connector, and the video card does work apart from HDMI.
I haven't tried Dell's ubuntu laptops, are they compatible?
Do these things work "out-of-the-box"?
Do these things work "out-of-the-box"?
I used Ubuntu (then briefly Mint and Debian) for years.
Being tired of issues like this is why I moved to OSX.
Being tired of issues like this is why I moved to OSX.
Exactly the same situation here
Too bad OS X doesn't have VM GPU passthrough - is just so damn tasty...
Too bad OS X doesn't have VM GPU passthrough - is just so damn tasty...
I dual-booted Ubuntu for a time, but there was always some niggling issue that prevented me from ever fully switching over. I come back and give it another shot every few years and it's always the same situation.
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I am also a Mint user, and I have run into this (and similar) bugs.
Yes, these problems exist on every platform. But with Windows, there's a vested interest by the company to make sure everyone can use it and things don't break. If things to break, there's a vested interest in making sure it's both easy and most importantly possible for an end-user or even a low level field support technician to fix it.
I've never had Windows fail to load the window manager. On Linux it's all too often that an update will make my first input to a newly booted system be "startx", or sometimes even dpkg --reconfigure xorg. It's not a fundamental issue with Linux, which make it more irritating. It's possible to make it work better than Windows, but there's so much fracturing and in-fighting about what the fix is that it just hasn't happened yet. A million eyes on the code might in theory make sure bugs go away, but it seems that the better route so far is a million dollars and one person overseeing development. Look at the huge leap in desktop Linux that Ubuntu gave us, and also look at how much flak they got for doing so.