Gee, I went from ubuntu 6.10 to 7.04 with no problems. Did it over the internet without reinstalling. No data loss. What the HELL are you talking about

Most of the hardware complaints against Linux, things like wireless cards, is for hardware that is not supported by Linux. People then expand that to claim that Linux has poor hardware support. I was trying to point out, and perhaps being too subtle, that Linux supports more hardware (in quantity) than either Windows or Mac OSX. There are some things like certain wireless and video chipsets where the manufacturer has not given anything to allow Linux to support their hardware, and I don’t know what you expect Linux to do about that.

I was also, again perhaps being to subtle, trying to point out that your irritation that Canonical doesn’t support online upgrades from 5.04 to 5.10 is also an illogical requirement, since neither Windows nor Mac OSX supports any online upgrades, even for releases less than 2 years old. As for finding ISOs, entering “Ubuntu 5.10 ISO” in google gave me many options to choose from. And for what it’s worth, last weekend I upgraded from 6.10 (Edgy) to 7.04 (Feisty), making it my third upgrade, without issue and without losing any data. Therefore one obviously can upgrade to the latest (even beta) versions of Ubuntu without a problem.

Out of the box, I’m sure you can share files between your windows and Mac, but I’ll bet it’s using SMB right? Well Ubuntu, out of the box, supports file sharing over SMB too, among other protocols. Out of the box, windows does not support SSH and to my knowledge it does not have Appletalk running by default either, both of which were part of your initial claim.

As for multimedia, again, your complaint is illogical. You want expensive software to be pre-installed on a free distro, and can’t understand why people think you’re wrong to want that. If you want software that costs money, you have to spend money on it, and there are several Linux distros that will let you pay them for that software, such as Linspire and Xandros. But if you pick a free distro, you can’t rationally complain about not having expensive software included.

The “Linux folks” know there are problems, some real some perceived, and they are working to fix them. Just recently the Kernel maintainers offered free Linux driver development to any hardware company willing to give them any information they can use to create those drivers. Microsoft makes you pay for the privilege of having your driver certified for Windows, but Linux will make it for you, maintain it for you, and let you advertise it as supported, for FREE! What more can they do? The KDE and Gnome “folks” are revising their human interface guidelines, even cooperating in the freedesktop.org to make guidelines that span both desktops. The next release of Ubuntu (7.04) will tell you what codec you need to play a media file, even allowing you to automatically download and install it if it is available in their repos, then continue playing your file. If you see “no evidence” of effort to make Linux a better desktop OS, you aren’t even trying to look.

Oh, yes, out of the box I absolutely can share files between my Windows PCs and my Macs, no extra software or installs necessary.

As for multimedia, the reasons why Ubuntu chooses not to ship various software are irrelevant. The fact is they don’t. That’s what matters to end users.

These problems are very, very real, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Until the Linux folks admit they have a problem they can’t begin to fix them, and their market share will be limited to the small percentage of systems that are servers.

Here are some things that struck me as wrong with your article:

“Synaptic Package Manager” is confusing, but “Outlook Express” is clear? How about “Safari”?

Can’t perform an online upgrade from 5.04 to 5.10? Try an online upgrade from Windows 95 to 98 or ME! Heck, try an internet upgrade from Windows XP to Vista, how does that work out for you?

Did you actually claim that Windows come with SSHD and AppleTalk even installed, let alone ready to use out of the box?

As for multimedia, if that is something you need to work out of the box, buy (yes buy, those codecs aren’t free) a distro that includes them. Ubuntu would love to ship with MP3 and WMV support enabled by default, but legally they can’t do that. They would love to ship with first-class graphics card drivers and wireless card drivers, but the people making them don’t always cooperate.

So bottom line is that Linux is ready for the desktop, maybe not every desktop, but then again neither is Windows or Mac OS X. I’m guessing you didn’t try to install OSX on that old PC, or try installing Windows XP on your old G5, did you?

“I had to reboot before it would realize it was reconnected, and this is on a wired desktop. I can only imagine how it behaves on a laptop with a spotty wireless connection.”
My laptop don’t have that problems

Equally impressive is how the author evaluates only one desktop environment (Gnome) and then concludes that he sees “no evidence that anyone is” making effort to put “Linux in a usable state”.

I wonder if he uses this same thorough approach in researching other technology for the computer books that he writes?

1. Choice is good. Capitalists are for it, monopolists are against it (not that most capitalists wouldn’t be monopolists if they could).

2. Linux UI design historically sucks. Denial doesn’t help. Neither the technical nor the political problems will be fixed overnight.

3. Most people don’t install anything, so ease of installation is a red herring.

4. The random-hardware problem is a Big Deal. Microsoft solves it by pushing the work onto the hardware companies. Apple solves it by only running on Apple-branded hardware. Linux and friends have to do it the hard way.

5. Nobody’s going to preinstall a distro that doesn’t have hot multimedia stuff (DVD players, iTunes, etc. etc.), and no distro can carry that until they have valid licenses, which cost $$$$$. This problem is being worked on.

[1] an unknowably large number slowly increasing without limit.