Ubuntu 9.04 For the Windows Power User 727
crazipper writes "Know a Windows power user who is (honestly) good with technology, but hasn't yet warmed to Linux? Tom's Hardware just posted a guide to installing and using Ubuntu 9.04, written specifically for the MS crowd (in other words, it talks about file systems, mount points, app installation, etc). Hopefully, by the end, your 'friend' will realize just how easy Ubuntu can be to use and start down a long path of exploration with a new operating system."
My experience shows a short path (Score:5, Interesting)
Dr. Pepper is not a valid substitute for Mr. Pibb.
What I've found is that many Windows users are quite happy to try other operating systems, especially free systems like Linux. They download MS Virtual PC, install the distro, fiddle with it for a while, then return to their Windows world.
It's not so much that there is something wrong with Linux that makes them reject it. It's not even really rejecting Linux so much as simply not finding their needs satisfied on the system.
Maybe it's lack of apps. Maybe it's lack of quality. Maybe it's the pain of actually migrating over all their data.
Whatever it is, Windows users usually seem to find their way back to Windows because it just does what they need. Emulating the look and feel of Windows isn't going to change the fact that their needs aren't satisfied by Linux.
Re:My experience shows a short path (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't switch primarily because of look and feel issues. I know how to do everything on a Windows system, anything that works differently feels "broken", even if it's a valid alternative choice.
As one example, to install software, I can go on the web, find the primary site for it, make sure it passes malware tests, and install it. On Linux, there's a repository (as I understand, never figured that part out). That may be a technologically superior option, but that means I have to trust the repository buildier. And it's not as though Linux is somehow immmune to malware that lets me skip that step. Anytime I install software it can do something I didn't except, on any OS.
Just a different flow means that little things I take for granted are missing, which makes it feel bad, which means I switch back to the land of "Start" buttons.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:1, Interesting)
"Then your friend can start down a long path of exploration with a new operating system."
Gosh, the summary makes it sound so fun. As a technically proficient windows user, I can't wait to start relearning everything for no apparent reason.
No way (Score:4, Interesting)
When somebody is a "Windows power user":
a) he's really a Computer power user. You cannot be a "X power user" without knowing the internals, and of course all the explanation about filesystem and mountpoints is useless.
b) he doesn't need a "guide" to download an iso, burn it and follow a series of on-screen instructions to install anything.
Taking into account a) and b), probably your "windows power user" has already tasted some flavor of linux and decided to stay in Windows (inferred because he's a "Windows power user" and not a "linux power user"). If it wasn't the case, i.e. if he never tried a distro, it was probably because he heard some of the limitations of linux compared to windows (only a bunch of commercial games, no photoshop/whatever, etc.) and then no guide is going to convince him to change.
Or are we talking about another kind of "power user"? Maybe "average-but-no-stupid windows user" fits better with the TFA.
This would be more useful. (Score:3, Interesting)
There has been a bit of a learning curve, and I honestly wished there was a built in tutorial explaining the OS better then just an on-line guide. Something that could directly compared the various tools directly to windows (Took me a while to figure out that you had to go to sessions to alter your startup) would have been EXTREMELY useful in my beginning days of Ubuntu.
Re:"Power Users"? I don't think so... (Score:4, Interesting)
I hardly see how this is a tutorial for "power users." The article makes out the terminal to be a big bad scary thing, but you'd think that most power users would at least be familiar with Start | Run | "cmd" | "ipconfig".
I've met plenty of Windows enthusiasts that are either uncomfortable or outright hostile towards the use of a command line. This despite Microsoft themselves coming to admit the usefulness in such a thing.
Re:My experience shows a short path (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever it is, Windows users usually seem to find their way back to Windows because it just does what they need. Emulating the look and feel of Windows isn't going to change the fact that their needs aren't satisfied by Linux.
In my case - I just don't feel like it. Back when I was a kid and when DOS ruled the lands, I fiddled around for weeks with Slackware and its dozens of floppies, and that was the time when Linux really didn't have much to offer and nobody had internet access. Configuring X for my Cirrus Logic 5426 VESA card was a pain, but I was a hacker and it was fun (I think I still have my old Linux home dir somewhere on my HDD). When I was in DOS, I used to spend a lot of time tinkering around with assembler and running programs through debuggers; a hex editor was my favourite toy.
When Windows 95 came out, I still booted to DOS most of the time. It was around 1996 or 1997 when I finally switched to Windows and told DOS to FO. Now I'm on XP SP2 and I can't even be bothered to upgrade to SP3.
Linux would suit my needs perfectly. I don't do anything special on my PC - I rarely play games, and let's face it, most of the time we spend online is in the browser or inside an IM app.
I can't be bothered. Windows works, it's stable, it's secure because I have a long background with computers. The only time I had a virus infection was in the above-mentioned 90s when I wrote my own virus and it accidentally spread to ".." (which happened to be the root of C partition) instead of "." (whoops).
Any OS would do what I need, and that's exactly the point - I have no incentive to switch to anything and waste time on it. "I'm too old for that shit."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Friends don't tell friends to install Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really.
Ubuntu uses Debian as a base, and while they have a lot of similarities they also have a lot of differences (Ubuntu is more concerned with flashy new features and user accessibility than stability or security). CentOS on the other hand is basically RHEL minus Red Hat's trademarks and live support.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Power Users"? I don't think so... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's mostly an age thing IMHO. Windows "power users" that never used anything pre-95 often don't know anything about the good old command prompt; even basic stuff like copying or renaming files.
Re:My experience shows a short path (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not taking a side here, but I want to point out that just because the problems are different doesn't mean they aren't there.
Linux folks generally don't have profit incentive, no, but I've found that a good number of them have an agenda of some kind. I'm sure you've read or heard about some of the bickering that goes on... It's not uncommon for a developer to get stuck in his ways and refuse to change with the users. Usually that just results in a fork or migration to other software, but there must be cases where it's degraded the user experience, same as the profit-driven world.
Astroturfing Galore (Score:1, Interesting)
As I read the negative posts, I just can't shake the feeling that many of them are professional astroturfers making sure the false FUD message "Linux isn't easy" gets spread thick and heavy. The tone and structure of the posts is just too... tidy.
Tales of a windows user using Ubuntu. (Score:5, Interesting)
Installation of Ubuntu is a breeze. So easy, very fast. (It's a good thing too). Ubuntu boots up fast, and even output it's video through the HDMI port on the back without any additional configuration. AWESOME!!
Cool, time to start installing apps. This is going to be running XBMC, so let's install. I go to xbmc.org click download, then choose Linux. Apperantly there is no download for linux, you use the package manager. Okay a little different than Windows, but sounds kinda fun. Sure.
So I learn about packages, and package managers, and adding third party software repositories, and signing keys. So far so good.
I follow the instructions, add some links to the third party source. I get key signing error messages (even though I followed the instructions 5[!] times trying to get it working). I give up on that, and just ignore the scary warning messages.
So I open the synaptic package manager and install the xbmc core. Everything goes great. A new entry is added to the "start menu" and all! It launches first try!
Cool, let's get some skins, from another thrird party source. I add it to the software sources again and reopen SPM to download. Download some skins but I guess I selected something wrong, because at next reboot, the computer will not boot to a windowed environment. All I get is the command line login and my password/user combo does not work. Lame.
Reinstall Ubuntu. Re add software sources. Can't find XBMC anymore! WTF?!?! It was worked last time. Reinstall ubuntu, still not working. GRR. Reinstall Ubuntu. No dice. anyways on the 5th time I got it working again. Still not sure where I went wrong.
Here are my thoughts on Ubuntu:
1) Installation is awesome.
2) Adding third party software is a MAJOR PAIN IN THE ASS!!! Following instrustions meant for a noob, I screwed it up 3/5 times. I swear I can follow instructions. I earn a living on fixing comptuer problems and following instructions.
3) Why do Linux programs close themselves? I dont' think they are crashing. Like I add a software source then hit close, it updates, gives me an error about my key not working, then terminates! So I have to reopen it.
4) Step 3 gave me an error, so naturally, I copied it to the clipboard. I click on okay and the error dissapears, terminating the program. My error, that WAS in the clipboard is now gone... Awesome.
5) Key signing for software packages is a pain in the ass & comlpicated. Surely there can be an easier way to get this working. How about downloading a file that contains the software source, and the key togeather and then import the file? I still can't get this thing working...
6) Synaptic Software manager's sorting is crappy. I open it up search for xbmc and see packages availalbe for installation. I can click the column headers and sort, but for some reason, when I select a package, the list unsorts! This makes it hard to select packages of similar type (skins in this case).
Overall, I think that Ubuntu is pretty cool, and I can't wait to learn more. However, given the issues that I came across, this is still not ready for the masses. Software installation is too convoluted and hard. I want to click to download, then click to install. Clipboard should not kill your data if the host program has been terminated. Programs should not terminate with no warning. Sorted lists should not unsort for no reason. Installs that will make your computer unusable should come with a warning.
I don't want to sound like Ubuntu is a POS, because that is not the case. I am impressed with a number of aspects, but there are sill a number of usability issues, IMO.
Pointed a Windows user to Ubuntu last night (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Friends don't tell friends to install Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Take what you said about 1am and switch Linux with Windows XP, add a scanner and email, and change friend to mother. There you have my situation, she also has games she does not want to part with.
I REALLY don't want to think what it will be like to switch my mother off XP to Vista or Windows 7. I learned this lesson the hard way when I switched her from 98 to XP. Whole new ball game for her, I may as well put Linux on there at that point.
I'm not sure her games will work in Vista or 7 either. She won't settle for some other implementation, it has to be the one's she plays which work on XP.
** Free sample **
From Mother: Why do I have to load XP if I have Windows 7?
From Me: Because it doesn't work in Windows 7, they gave you Windows XP on top of that to do this.
From Mother: Why doesn't it just work? Why do I have to go through all this to get XP running and then run my game?
From Me: Because they want to get you off XP.
From Mother: Why? I paid for it!
From Me: *sigh*
From Mother: What a racket!
Re:Installing Ubuntu isn't the hard part (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Who needs Microsoft Office? The answer is: unless you're in a corporate environment, almost no one. OpenOffice.org works just fine for Aunt Tillie who needs to write letters and keep her recipes on the computer. And even those in a corporate environment have gotten by with out it.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. I agree that OO okay for people that just need to type something and print it, but EVERYBODY ELSE uses MS Office. It's become the standard whether people like it or not and OO doesn't handle the formatting well enough to be a replacement yet. If you need to share electronic documents of any real complexity with anybody else, it's just not good enough.
2) Photoshop is not needed by nearly as many people as you might think. Unless you're a professional photographer or a serious amateur, Photoshop is simply overkill. Krita and GIMP will meet the needs of 99% of anybody who needs photo editing, including a lot of those professionals and prosumers.
Agreed, but it's hard to convince people of that when Photoshop has become a verb.
3) iTunes is reported to run under Wine.
Really? Most of the contributers on it's WineHQ AppDB [winehq.org] page are BRONZE or GARBAGE. Maybe it runs for some people, but that's hardly the same as WORKING. That's not a solution for a typical user.
4) I don't stream Netflix, but have heard that you can do it under Linux.
No recent knowledge of this one, but I tried a few months back and it was a futile exercise. Where'd you hear that?
5) Playing what games? There are plenty of native Linux games. Oh, you mean playing the latest-and-greatest RTS/MMORPG/FPS/etc.? Well, if that's your bag, then you need Windows. BTW--you're still in the minority of computer users.
Native games aren't Windows games. People want to play the game their friends are playing or that they saw on TV.
6) There are ways of playing Blu-Rays on Linux....
I have no direct knowledge of this one, but your typical user is most likely not going to get it working.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Power Users"? I don't think so... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Power Users"? I don't think so... (Score:1, Interesting)
people don't use computers for their operating systems, they use them for the apps.
Somebody please mod the parent comment up, if only for this insightful and completely accurate comment. I am anonymous, and a coward, but this to me highlights the second-greatest stumbling block that Linux systems face in the MS-centric apps world. (FYI, the greatest stumbling block is the GUI-centric focus of MS users, who would in all places prefer to see a radio button or a checkbox than a command-line switch. Several platforms such as Ubuntu and Fedora have been actively working on this, to great success I might add...)
The most unfortunate conundrum that MS users who want to 'make the leap' to Linux face is that, once they do, the majority of their legacy programs and games will not 'just work' as they did on MS. Much fiddling, tweaking and messing about is required, and while Wine has helped greatly with this, the usage list is limited, and setting up a 'new' application to run under it (or troubleshooting an 'established' application, for that matter) is not very intuitive to non-Linux users.
True, for *almost* every MS-based app there is an equivalent open source Linux-based app that works just as well if not better, but not so for games and the lesser-known applications that some people have come to love. I am a big fan of the PortableApps suite, for instance, because of the small and portable footprints of several well-loved programs. I understand some people are working on a Linux version, but I highly doubt the final product would have the polish and ease-of-use as the Windows-based portable apps. (Yes, I know that the bulk of the PortableApps are based on opensource Linux projects that have been ported to Windows, but the portability is the key...I can't install the normal distro of OpenOffice, for example, move it to a thumb drive and then have it work on other computers that I plug my thumb drive into...)
Perhaps what would help propagate Linux the most would be an actual emulator service (instead of 'Wine Is NOT an Emulator') that runs on startup, detects when an application is trying to install 'in a Windows fashion' (i.e., registry mods, trying to add dll's to Windows directories, etc.) and actually emulates the required components of the Windows platform to suit? I have no idea what would be involved in that, not being a programmer, but as an end user if I had reasonable confidence that all my little helper windows apps would be able to 'just work' on a particular Linux distro, without having to tweak and primp and mod endless system or program variables, I'd so be there.
(of course, the down side to that would be potentially opening Linux distros up to every little Windows virus and exploit out there...no such thing as perfection, I guess...)
Re:My experience shows a short path (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Power Users"? I don't think so... (Score:5, Interesting)
...have you seen the Windows command line?
cmd.exe deserves nothing less than open hostility.
There's always Powershell... Pretty smartly designed, IMO.
Re:My experience shows a short path (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently called Logitech asking if the MX would work on Ubuntu, as it is not stated on the webpage. The tech said no, in fact, Logitech does not make any mice that work with Linux. Then I called Microsoft and discussed the Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 with the tech. The MS tech was very helpful and I'll be receiving the mouse in a few days (ordered on the 'net).
As crazy as it sounds, Logitech has no interest in selling Linux users it's hardware. Therefore, I have no interest in giving them my money. Microsoft, on the other hand, was very helpful and professional. They earned my $60.
Re:Friends don't tell friends to install Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
And how is that different then friends running windows calling you at 2am?
Because:
I had promised to help him whenever he had problems.
I was young, naive and did the "switch to Linux! It's easy! I'll help you with any problems you have!" thing.
I think he still uses Fedora as his primary desktop now, many years later. It worked out in the end but it was far more work than I expected, so think twice about converting your non-techie friends to Linux!
n.b. "Windows Power Users" are non-techie. Real nerds convert themselves to Unix!
Re:Important question... (Score:5, Interesting)
What advantages does it have over, let's say, Windows XP?
Virtual desktops that don't suck. A command line that doesn't suck. KIOslaves. Windowshading. sshd. Screen. Apt-get.
It's not so much the apps, but the workflow is so much nicer in Linux.
Re:Tales of a windows user using Ubuntu. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't want to sound like Ubuntu is a POS, because that is not the case.
No no, you'd be justified doing so. The sheer number of regressions (combined with the attitude that folks get when they're reported on Bugzilla) indicates that Ubuntu is all about adding the latest flashy features with little to no regard for stability and reliability.
Still, I do feel I should respond to a few of your points:
Key signing for software packages is a pain in the ass & comlpicated. Surely there can be an easier way to get this working. How about downloading a file that contains the software source, and the key togeather and then import the file? I still can't get this thing working...
Unless I'm misunderstanding your point, this would completely defeat the purpose of signed packages.
Synaptic Software manager's sorting is crappy. I open it up search for xbmc and see packages availalbe for installation. I can click the column headers and sort, but for some reason, when I select a package, the list unsorts! This makes it hard to select packages of similar type (skins in this case).
Hm. Sounds like a problem with the version of Synaptic shipped with Ubuntu then. I actually tried to reproduce this, but I couldn't -- then again I'm running a strict Debian 5.0 install (nothing outside of main), so I'm definitely not running the same version as you are.
Overall, I think that Ubuntu is pretty cool, and I can't wait to learn more. However, given the issues that I came across, this is still not ready for the masses. Software installation is too convoluted and hard.
I've actually found apt-get to be far, far easier than installing anything on Windows. I don't have to go hunting for DLLs, I don't have to screw with the registry -- I just install the packages that I want and the package manager takes care of the rest. In the cases where it requires manual intervention, it does so for a good reason -- some tasks simply cannot be made any simpler without potentially compromising either your system's integrity or it's stability (or both, for that matter.)
I want to click to download, then click to install.
I know. But try to understand: it's that "ease of installation" that's responsible for the stability problems faced by Windows (apps routinely dump incompatible stuff into System32), as well as the numerous issues with security (if it's that simple to install software from a random website then you can bet that folks who aren't security-savvy will do exactly that.)
Clipboard should not kill your data if the host program has been terminated.
The last time I experienced this was with a random GNOME app c. 2002. I run Linux on the desktop full time, and I've never, ever seen this happen since then. I'm not saying that I don't believe you experienced that, but I'd urge you to consider that perhaps this is one of the numerous problems arising as a result of Ubuntu's poor quality control, rather than a problem endemic to Linux as a whole.
Programs should not terminate with no warning. Sorted lists should not unsort for no reason.
Again: Ubuntu's QA sucks. Hard. Please excuse my terseness, but I too find it irritating that someone's first experience with Linux is marred by Ubuntu's "bleeding edge" nature.
Do bugs exist that could cause this behavior in other distros? Sure. But by and large you're far more likely to see this sort of weirdness on a distro that focuses on "freshness" over stability.
Installs that will make your computer unusable should come with a warning.
Again, this is an issue with Ubuntu (and Fedora, and other "bleeding-edge" distros.) I've never, ever, *ever* witnessed a loss of stability due to a package that I've installed from Debian's stable repository. Not once. And I've been using Debia
Re:Fantastic! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fantastic! (Score:3, Interesting)
You say that like it's a bad thing. If you know what you're doing, there's loads of useless crap in the Windows directory.
This is modded funny, but it's no joke. The windows directory has a ton of stuff which hardly anybody ever uses. Nlite [nliteos.com] can help a lot with this issue — basically, it lets you customize your windows installation CD, remove all of the components which you don't need, and while you're at it, slipstream the latest service pack, updates, and any settings you want preconfigured. Pretty nifty.