On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:25:49PM -0500, Jye Nigma wrote:
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=t\
echnology
>

Yes, that was a pretty good article. One problem is that they glossed
over, in a sentence, the fact of how updates can wreck video or sound.

The trouble is that if MS or Mac does that, the user is usually more or
less resigned to it. If Ubuntu does it, and they do it too often at
this point, the user goes back to Windows or Mac.

Fedora is more or less broken by design, considering itself a testing
distro--the trouble is, that they ignore the many users who test it for
them and tell them what's wrong.

Ubuntu is a bit more responsive, but some of their decisions border on
moronic.

I saw an interesting example the other day. Researching why my computer
clock kept getting set back to UTC, (which, AFAIK, doesn't use daylight
savings time) it turned out to be a Ubuntu install. Researching a bit
further (eventually I found that one edits /etc/default/rcS) I saw a
developer saying, "It's the only sane way to do it, and we're not going
to change it."

I had to laugh. Errm, in the US, which probably has at least 100
computers, they do, for better or worse, Daylight Savings Time. There's
probably at least 50 servers in the US. (Yes, I'm being a bit sarcastic
about the numbers.) For them, it's not the sane way to do it.
(Granted, most servers will have a time server, but regardless). It
struck me as a rather poorly thought out statement, and the type of
attitude that will help ensure that 2009 is not the year of the Linux
desktop.

I'm assuming that when I installed that particular Ubuntu setup, I
simply overlooked an option to tell it that the system doesn't use UTC.
Fedora has it, and it's easy to skip if you're in a hurry. (I'm not
going to bother going through an Ubuntu install to see if that's the
case, but I'd be surprised if they didn't offer the option.)

My point here isn't that its default is UTC, it was the developer's
attitude that it's the only sane way to do it.

Ubuntu, especially, since it aims to be a Linux for human beings, as
they say, has to consider some of their updates. I have to laugh that
they put in the still horribly buggy pulse audio, but feel OpenOffice 3
is too new. OO 3 works, pulse audio often doesn't. Again, easy enough
to fix, but not for my mom.

That all being said, last month, my wife had to take a trip and took my
Aspire One laptop. I set it up for her with Ubuntu and she had almost
no problems using it. Afterwards, she said, It's almost the same as the
Mac or Windows.

Of course, I'd made sure to set it up for her, but it was pretty
straightforward. The only real customization I did was ensure that her
favorite freecell version was on there and that Japanese input was set
up properly. (She said I didn't have to bother with Japanese input, but
after being married many years, I know that what she says isn't
necessarily what she means--sure enough, she called me in three days to
say, "Can I do Japanese on this?" Had I not set it up, we would have
wound up in a fight, I'm sure. :)

As it was, I said, Yup, hit control + space. See that little thing on
the lower right?


Anyway, pardon the long winded digression, it is a good article and
worth reading. The fact that it's the business section of the New York
Times is also a good thing.


--
Scott Robbins
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