The #1 way that Linux has traditionally been an epic fail is that the Distro Du Jour of the week, month, or year creates all of this hype around it – in particular, among the more irresponsible fanboy Linux journalists. Inevitably, this hype proposes that this may be the week, month, year, decade, century, epoch or whatever when Linux will finally replace Windows.
In the past it has been any number of distros – most notably RedHat. Currently, the Linux golden child is Ubuntu – the “It Just Works” Linux. That is the Linux I’ve been working with the most – for several months now. At one point, I had the broad, over-reaching and in hindsight, clearly unrealistic goal of using Ubuntu exclusively in my daily life for at least a 2 week period. I suppose if I were a Linux journalist who ONLY wrote pro-Linux screeds that were only published on a Linux friendly website and never visited anywhere else, a diet of Ubuntu might have worked. But let’s face it, in this comparison, using Linux as your daily OS is analogous to going on a Rice-Cake diet to deal with high cholesterol. You can do it, and make it work, and achieve your goals – but with so much of the joy robbed from the activity, there is probably some better option (DEATH by stroke or heart attack, in the case of high cholesterol).
If it seems that I am even more characteristically disillusioned with Linux – I am. Ubuntu, as the current flagship, Penguin-Banner-bearer of the Linux community, with the “It Just Works” mantra, is a HUGE disappointment, and is probably as ineffective as the OLPC program, which is also driven by these quasi-socialist ideals and agendas about “equitable computing platforms for all”.
Listen, in that sense, I’m glad that we’ve got a cheap OS and companies trying to make cheap hardware platforms for the world’s poor. It is the high tech answer to “let them eat cake”. In this case, we’re not talking about a fully angel cake with thick rich frosting and candy sprinkles, though. We’re talking about a thick, dense, tasteless brick of stale yeech. If you’re starving, it’ll keep you alive – but anyone with any other options would be better off to go with those alternatives. That is what Ubuntu is like. The fact that the OLPC program has had so little success, so much controversy, and seen so many competitors enter the market with For Profit models illustrates that things like Linux and OLPC appeal to only the most dedicated or the most desperate. For the rest of the world, there is a Netbook, and, looking at the return rates, a Win32 netbook, at that.
Maybe, at this point, I should mention what has ignited my wrath toward Linux in general, and Ubuntu in particular, this time around.
Months ago, during the 7.04 release, I complained about how difficult “out of the box” ATI graphic support was for Ubuntu. And it is, there is no dispute of this fact. Ubuntu and Linux forums are overflowing with people complaining about trying to get ATI chipsets to work, in particular with Compiz, using Restricted drivers. The Linux defederati like to explain that it isn’t the *nix community’s fault that ATI is being a bogart with their source-code *and* releasing “bad” drivers that don’t work.
At the time, I was having this problem on a desktop. My solution, which came highly recommended, was to replace the ATI card with an Nvidia card (something I needed little incentive to do, being about as confident in ATI products as I am of Big-3 automobiles – I did find it funny that the “Anti-Top Dog” with such a traditional “No-Microsoft, No Intel, No Nvidia” alternate-PC-lifestyle approach would end up recommending Nvidia as soon as THEY ran into problems with crappy ATI drivers – something Win32 folks have been dealing with for decades). Around that time, I experienced a number of things that distracted me from my *nix Desktop experiment – including acquisition of a Lenovo netbook and an EeePC, which I set up with Win32/Wubuntu and Ubuntu, respectively.
Recently I got back to the desktop, having decided to go with Ubuntu exclusively on the EeePC and deciding that it was just taking up valuable drive space on the Lenovo and removing it during a Win32 rebuild (Lenovo ships their Netbook with a Fat32 partition for some reason, and through my OWN mistakes, I blew the convert to NTFS and had to start from scratch).
Right away I started running into serious problems. I’ve got a fairly obscure and relatively old GEM 15″ LCD on my test bench in the basement that is, worse yet, shared by a generic beige KVM switch. Now, in all defense, any number of Win32 machines detect the refresh and resolution of this rig FINE – but Ubuntu is flailing horribly at it. I mean… it is a fairly old LCD. Come on… it isn’t like it is a stone age CRT. Even then, I’ve got to wonder, I thought one of the arguments was the beauty of *nix support for all manner of OLD equipment that was effectively EOL-ed in the Win32 support arena. Anyhow, lots of reading, and sure enough, LOTS of people are experiencing this same issue. And it turns out the problem is (Can I get a drum roll here…):
Nvidia drivers in 8.1 and up. They’re broken. And guess what… the defenderati are busy trotting out the SAME excuse they use for ATI. “It isn’t the *nix community’s fault that Nvidia is bogarting the source code and releasing bad drivers”.
So – Ubuntu… It Just Works… UNLESS you are running ATI or Nvidia based GPUs.
Isn’t that basically, “Ubuntu, It Doesn’t Really Work At All”… more realistically.
I mean, I suppose it Just Works if you have an original ISA 1mb “Hercules” SVGA card.
Or, even a modern, base Intel graphic chipset.
But it seems to me, PRETTY bold, to have the Motto that your OS “Just Works” when your OS has SIGNIFICANT issues with not just the number 2 Graphic Chipset manufacturer in the world, but with the #1 Graphic Chipset manufacturer, as well. Especially when there is pretty much effectively only ONE other choice, the distant 3rd of Intel graphic chipsets. By the way, I can tell you that Intel never intended to compete with 3D chipset producers. They wanted to make sure that all Intel machines had a BASE level of 3D capability that would require after-market 3D sellers to meet a higher level of BASE quality. Seriously. So the #3 option, which is the only one that Ubuntu supports, is pretty much aknowledged by the manufacturer as a “throw away/gimme” item that MOST users are going to replace with an aftermarket GPU solution – we can presume from ATI or Nvidia.
And listen, I get it – I’m going to have to research the verticial and horizontal refresh rates and manually edit my xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 if I want anything higher than 800×600@65.
But listen, until the most POPULAR, end-user oriented Linux distro out there can consistently get monitor resolution plug-and-play consistently correct on HIGHLY typical hardware that MOST Joe Average users are going to have – Linux is not even REMOTELY a threat to Win32, which has been getting this pretty much right for 10 years now, at least. When you’ve got to know enough to know where the X config file is, what it is called, how to edit it by hand, and what the information is you need to add and where to find it – Linux is still FAR from ready for prime time. As a matter of fact, when Ubuntu is the alleged poster-child for end-user desktop ready “It Just Works” Linux OS… then Linux versus Win32 equals Epic Linux Fail.
Another thing that drives me nuts – Surfing the forums for answers, I saw all kinds of people clearly speaking ESL (English as a Second Language) to OTHER ESL speakers trying to explain and help resolve the problem, and effectively being two ships passing in the night. The person ASKING wasn’t able to clearly explain the problem with their broken English, and the person trying to ANSWER wasn’t able to understand OR provide the correct answer. After several exchanges of happy-happy-going-nowhere-pidgin English between the two, the thread would die – and no one would pick it back up.
Now, if that had been a week ago, I’d have faith that this issue was being worked to a resolution. But many of these posts were way back in summer of 2008, and some look like they went back further. And I feel that I see this a LOT in the Ubuntu community. Not just problems, but widespread problems that are known and ignored or that never seem to get any traction on a resolution.
Altogether frustrating – and I’ve got better things to do with my productivity time. Ubuntu just isn’t ready. And it is the BEST thing *nix has going for it.
Which says it all, about the state of Linux at the moment.
