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Linux: not for me

Friday January 08 2010

I’m a satisfied Windows user. However I’ve wanted to try out linux for some time to see what it is all about and whether it’s ready for the mainstream.

Over the past couple of years I’ve tried and failed to install linux 5 times prior to this past weekend. I tried ubuntu on my 2nd desktop a couple of times and then on my primary desktop i tried ubuntu, mint and suse. Each of these wouldn’t install—the install would start to run but never finish. I couldn’t figure out why as neither of my computers was particularly cutting edge at the time of the attempt.

This past Sunday after about 6 months since the last try I decided to give it another go and it finally installed. However after rebooting the computer went strait to Windows Vista. There was no option to choose my o/s and every guide I had looked at said that grub should automagically be there giving me the option to choose Ubuntu or Vista.

So I installed again and had the same problem. At this point I posted on the ubuntu forums and tweeted about the problem. The response on the ubuntu forum was pretty quick—better than most open source projects that I have used in the past (I’m looking at you Wordpress and Moodle). However the best help came from twitter from one guy I didn’t know gnimsha and also from another of my twitter followers Jason of InvokedProjects. Both were helpful, but Jason went Above and Beyond.

We went to a chat room where he gave me some things to try. Eventually it got so he wanted to see my computer screen as I did yet another install of ubuntu—at this point I had installed ubuntu about 4 times in one day—so I set up my laptop with my web cam pointed at the monitor of my desktop and moved to skype.

The solution it turned out to my problem of not being able to dual boot was to disconnect two of my hard drives and only have the drive with Vista and Ubuntu on there. Once I installed it again it would allow me to dual boot. I watched the install carefully and when grub is installed it goes directly to HD0 but my o/s is on HD2. Why grub doesn’t get installed on the same disk as the o/s is beyond me. I then connected my other two drives and was still able to dual boot. Yeah, success. But a lot of wasted time.

Playing with Ubuntu

Now I got into Ubuntu and was pleased to note that my audio and internet was working strait away—something that I heard didn’t always happen. After a couple of minutes I managed to get dual monitors working however was unable to rotate my right monitor to a vertical profile. Searching turned up several results for nvidia graphic cards but nothing for ATI which left me frustrated.

I then did something which I don’t remember the result of which was that I hosed Ubuntu and had to reinstall, yet again. At least the install for Ubuntu is very quick 12 minutes start to finish. Once again back into Ubuntu and I get dual monitors installed faster this time and even find out that I need the ATI drivers—install, reboot and it’s great—rotating fine.

Now I want to use a twitter app but none of the ones in the application directory are any good. I find out that tweetdeck and adobe air run on ubuntu. Great that’s what I use in Windows. I tried over and over to install air, but it won’t install—keeps failing. On twitter I asked about it and was told to go to adobe and install it there—nope, that’s what I did.

I also wanted to install a couple of other programs of which I cannot remember their name. Anyhow when I downloaded them and double clicked nothing happened or I was told that the correct application to install it wasn’t installed or I needed to use command line. So now to install programs, I need to learn a bunch of archaic shell commands. How does that make a computer easy to use? it doesn’t.

At this point, I’ve spent about 10-12 hours trying to use ubuntu—it’s not worth it. I have much better things to do with my time. I honestly don’t understand PC users who move to linux and claim it’s better. How is it better. It doesn’t “just work”, in fact it’s a major PITA to get it to work at all. Worried about viruses? I haven’t had a virus in 8 years on Windows.

Windows just works. I’m looking forward to installing Windows 7 this weekend because I know it will install without a hassle and just work just like every other version of Windows I’ve installed.

Sean inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Jan 8, 2010 at 08:04 AM

| tags: windows, linux, vista, win7, ubuntu, |

Comments

Dave wrote 144 words on Friday Jan 8, 2010 at 09:29 AM

Did you install the 64-bit version of Ubuntu, by any chance?

Also, I think you’re rather (self-admittedly, too) biased. You’ve never used Linux in the past, so asking a system different from something you’ve used for god knows how long to be instantly understandable for you is not very fair, I’d say. Sounds to me like you didn’t give it enough of a chance just yet .

Looking at the bigger picture, though, I think you got a lot of things work ‘out of the box’, even with your limited knowledge of Ubuntu .

Oh, and at the last step before the actual install of Ubuntu, there’s an advanced button that allows you to specify what hard drive you’d like GRUB to be installed to. Perhaps that would’ve saved you a lot of time (and you could just keep those other drives plugged in).

Sean wrote 208 words on Friday Jan 8, 2010 at 09:37 AM

Dave,

Yes I installed 64bit. Yes I am biased, but curious and less biased against linux than Mac.

I didn’t expect it to be easy, but the real killer for me is the need to use command line to install programs. Yes there are tons of tutorials out there, but that means looking up a tutorial everytime you want to install something that needs to be chmodded or whatever. That is not user friendly.

Wish I had known about that option - can’t remember seeing it, but I’m sure it’s there regardless of my memory.

Like I said in the post I was happy that the internet and audio worked strait out of the box - I was playing mp3s and surfing quickly. I’m also impressed with the total install time: 12 minutes from the time I put the CD in the tray until it rebooted and that included partitioning and inputting whatever info was required.

Anyhow, I’ll probably give linux another shot in a couple of years once it’s had more time to mature. I still stand by my assessment that it’s not ready for mainstream. Until my mother could use it out of the box without help, in my opinion, it will remain a hobbyist/enthusiast o/s.

John Fuller wrote 217 words on Friday Jan 8, 2010 at 09:41 AM

I don’t think Linux will ever be mainstream on the desktop. The only place where it might be considered mainstream is as a “utility” OS on devices such as mobile phones (Google’s Android for example.)

Spending hours trying to figure out the smallest issues? Welcome to the world of Linux. This pretty much never ends, even after you get good with it. I have used Linux as my primary OS for about half of the past three years and I still run into issues which might take a couple of hours or more to figure out.

Linux is great for development because the OS is the same environment as the server. However, I have found that I don’t need Linux as my primary OS to take advantage of Linux. I now believe the best setup is to run a server distro of Linux (no GUI) as a VM on Windows. That eliminates the need to dual boot. I also have a VPS with Slicehost which I have setup much the same as my Linux desktop sans the GUI (I use a lot of command line tools.) For that type of setup to work for you requires a good knowledge of the command line / text environment though, so you still aren’t getting away from a time investment.

Sean wrote 27 words on Friday Jan 8, 2010 at 09:43 AM

John,
Thanks for the comment. Are you still in the Philippines?

You’re set up sounds like it’s far too much work for what I want to do.

John Fuller wrote 17 words on Friday Jan 8, 2010 at 09:50 AM

Yep, still in the Philippines. I see your IP to nation add-on got me correct this time.

Dave wrote 55 words on Friday Jan 8, 2010 at 09:54 AM

The 64-bit version especially kind of sucks, compatibility-wise. I too kept running into issues for the most basic things (ie. installing Adobe AIR). I’d recommend you try the 32-bit version and see how that works for you, just for the heck of it. If anything, most driver/application installations will work as simple as they should.

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