I mean, it is free, right?
Seriously… I’ve called Ubuntu on this before around here, and I always get the response,
“Well, you have to…”
Listen… that isn’t “It JUST works”. That is, “It WILL work, if YOU tweak with it”.
XP “Just Works”. OS X actually “Just Works”.
Ubuntu is Linux, and Linux doesn’t “Just Work”.
Interestingly enough, again, this is a laptop where Ubuntu isn’t Just Working. It is actually a Netbook, a Eee PC 701 – and it is an install that is “customized” for the Eee PC 701. I’ll give it some props – it found and configured everything, although I had to mess around with wireless a bit (that didn’t JUST work, but the difficulty in making it Just Work was comparable to the kind of difficulty one might encounter with a Win32 install, so we’ll call it close enough).
What didn’t Just Work was Network Browsing of a Win32 workgroup through the default Gimp Network Browsing app. The error I get and the symptoms I am seeing are well documented – there are various bug tickets opened AND closed with no solution on the Ubuntu bug forums. One of the forum moderators actually reopened a bug report with the comment, “This is a very large obstacle to “Just Working” for many users, and needs to be resolved”, but then someone else subsequently closed it again, with no solution. “If we ignore the issue, maybe it will just go away”.
Now, using SMBw2k browser (I think that is it), a KDE app, I can make it work suitable for my needs – and so I’m going to leave Ubuntu on this machine. But there are a score of other trivial annoyances as well. The Codecs for Mp4 video are from the “Bad” codec set – and so to watch an iPod movie I have to deal with all kinds of nasty video artifacts.
Best of all, is Ubuntu bloat. I could get a full install with no pre-install modifications of XP onto the SSD at just over 2gb. Ubuntu is pushing 3.4gb for a full install. That leaves me around 600mb free.
If all other things were equal, and Win XP were FREE, it would be a no brainer – there would be NO reason to use Linux. It is more difficult to set up and support, there is more opportunity in my experience, for modifcations and changes to introduce new unwanted behavior into the system.
I’m not sure what changed, but I’ve been having a much more difficult time getting Adobe Flash to work with Ubuntu lately. This is one of those things that should Just Work. Linux is already at a disadvantage against Win32 for feature rich web browsing. Having Flash be difficult or impossible to install just makes Linux that much less useful to the typical user.
This is the link I used to install:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=611422
It is amazing that you actually have to do so much post-install cleanup to get it working properly on an Eee PC.
I hear that Ubuntu “Just Works”, but I haven’t yet had a machine yet where install went without a hitch and everything worked as satisfactory as it would have with an XP install. Not just one machine, but a half a dozen of them, from old Celeron 333mhz to modern core duo desktop machines.