5 ms·

Will Linux Survive on Netbooks?

10 points by kqr2 18y ago

Tichy 17y ago
Incredible news somehow. Users really liked using Windows better than Ubuntu?
- patio11 17y ago
  1) Set your system's language to Japanese (or Swahili, or another language which is totally foreign to your experience) 2) Go through a week of normal use, including both routine open-the-Internet-and-send-email use and change-the-desktop-image level non-routine use. You now know about one hundredth of the amount of pain a non-technical user has when switching OSes. (P.S. She hates brown, cannot change the desktop image, and her nephew who is good with computers doesn't know how to either because none of the files he's describing are on the window and this is so frustrating to her.)
  - Tichy 17y ago
    The change the system language things hardly seems fair. Ubuntu is available in most (all?) languages, and not very cryptic to understand either. In fact it tends to be more logical than Windows. Internet/Email: I tend to solve these issues by putting big fat icons for Firefox and Thunderbird (+Open Office) on the desktop (and also in the "quick launch bar" of course). Desktop background: touche. But people who can't change it on Ubuntu probably can't change it on Windows either? Nephew: true - most people probably switch to Linux because their nephew tells them to do so... So if the nephew is still on Windows, bad luck. Also, maybe a lot of people just buy the netbook with Windows and then install Linux anyway (bagging the free Windows license for later use). Edit: one more thing that is easy to forget: make Open Office to use Microsoft formats by default.
    - Poiesis 17y ago
      You missed the point. It wasn't that Ubuntu isn't localized, it was to attempt to demonstrate the massive frustration users encounter when they don't know how to do anything. I have a Ubuntu netbook, and I'll agree Linux has come a long way, but when I click on the friendly "you have updates" button and then break my wireless, forcing me to track down drivers/packages I don't hold much hope for the common people as it were. It was frustrating to me! The language of typical Linux users is very much different than the language of typical PC users I'd say. The ways we would describe a task are much different and the things you learn on one platform often don't help you on the other. A massive problem too is the fact there's essentially no configuration management among Linux distros, making support a nightmare. What's the GUI going to look like? What's the package manager going to be? Etc, etc. I actually lied. The netbook used to have Ubuntu, now it has OS X. It's easier, even considering the hack to get it on there. Last time I owned a mac was system 7, so it's not like there isn't a learning curve there. It's just that they give a damn about the user experience, and as a general rule will not release unless they know the experience will be good.
      - Tichy 17y ago
        Yes, but my point was that it is not actually so hard to find out how to do stuff on Linux. If you can read the language, you can find the "system settings" menu - much easier than reading japanese. "Normal" stuff that is - obviously if you have to fall back on the average Linux tutorial, download drivers and so on, it is bad. But this shouldn't happen usually. What did you do with the wireless drivers? I would have thought that if a netbook comes with Ubuntu, the proper drivers would be installed.
        Poiesis 17y ago
        The dell-installed Ubuntu prompted me that there were updates available. I downloaded/installed them, my wireless quit working. It was working before the update.
- adamc 17y ago
  Users like what is familiar, as far as the OS goes. They aren't using computers to learn new things about computers. They just want to surf the net, email, etc. Every new Linux-specific thing they have to learn is a waste of time. Every familiar app they can't run is a loss.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    I must admit, when I set up Ubuntu for friends and family, I make sure to place Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office as icons on the Desktop. I also remove the top bar (I think the two status bars of Gnome are silly). The only difficult thing is scanning, but that is complicated on Windows, too.
philh 17y ago
The eee PC and Aspire One, which I believe are two of the best-selling netbooks, both have horrible distros. I gather netbooks were targeted for doing internet and office, so the disros are optimised for doing that and nothing else. If it turns out most people want to do more with their netbook (which the hardware is certainly capable of), it's no surprise that they would avoid linux when linux makes it difficult for them to do what they want. Does any netbook ship with a non-crippled linux distro? I'd like to see sales figures for that, especially compared to a windows version on the same hardware.
- skwiddor 17y ago
  I have an EEEPC 901 with Xandros. At first I was quite enamoured with it's distro but it's not that great. The updater fills it up with updates until it runs out of system disk space and I have to reset it, even though I have a 20Gb version (the sysem space is tiny [I don't have it with me so I can't look]). The scheduler isn't very good, scrolling on Firefox comes in bursts and often I think the thing has locked up. Firefox is probably not the best choice because of its bloat (ironic from the light-weight mozilla!). That said, when I ran Plan 9 in Qemu on it, I didn't find any such problems. Web browsing on my G1 is a much nicer experience. I could seriously see Android being a good fit with my EeePc.
DannoHung 17y ago
Linux won't "win" the Desktop until there is a generational leap over other OSes. Linux can't win because everyone else can see what Linux programmers are programming and can copy all the ideas, if not the code outright. I love Linux, don't get me wrong, but it's always going to be a second banana for the consumer.
- liuliu 17y ago
  I don't see any impact from "commercial" software to Linux. As all the commercial software turns to online service, you have to pay monthly fee in order to use the service. Linux will dominate the network market as it was done in embedded system market because it can easily be customized. Any software value on the customized distro (browser, email or IM) is included in the hardware sales (like decades ago when we sold these "huge" computers).
Herring 17y ago
Why does it matter? This always struck me as a rather useless popularity contest. I'm on ubuntu & except for games*, there isn't a single thing I'd boot vista for. There's one or two long tail apps I'd like to have, but they wouldn't help the linux community much. [^] And seeing how they treat Macs, I don't think game publishers will put up with developing for 3 platforms.
TweedHeads 17y ago
FUD patrol is always protecting netizens from BS like this.
3pt14159 17y ago
I was forced to buy my netbook with windows ("it is the only one we have in stock right now") and I wasn't willing to go through the hassle of getting a $10 refund. I installed the very latest version of Ubuntu and I couldn't be happier. Everything is fast. Really fast. With the 20 some odd terminal commands I know I can install nearly anything I need (except MS Excel :{) and there is no 30 day trial period that I have to be reminded of constantly, no spyware (not that I ever got it anyways), built in programming stuff like compilers. I'm by no means a serious programmer, just a quant that likes to spend his weekends learning about polymorphism. I've had such a good experience that I told my computer illiterate friend that I will build his new computer for him for free, provided that he use Ubuntu for 1 month. This guy doesn't know the difference between the terms "URL" and "Web Browser" but I think that for what he does - movies, chatting, email, surfing - he will have a far better experience. Why? No spyware and a much easier UI.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
He seems somewhat excited by the prospect of linux failing on notebooks, yet I'm sure I read a rash of these articles a while ago when the Q1 numbers got released, then another bunch when the numbers got disputed. What's he adding to the debate now? Nothing that I can see, though it appears he's got some axe to grind about linux on smartphones being better than linux on netbooks.

10 points by kqr2 18y ago

Tichy 17y ago

Incredible news somehow. Users really liked using Windows better than Ubuntu?

patio11 17y ago
1) Set your system's language to Japanese (or Swahili, or another language which is totally foreign to your experience) 2) Go through a week of normal use, including both routine open-the-Internet-and-send-email use and change-the-desktop-image level non-routine use. You now know about one hundredth of the amount of pain a non-technical user has when switching OSes. (P.S. She hates brown, cannot change the desktop image, and her nephew who is good with computers doesn't know how to either because none of the files he's describing are on the window and this is so frustrating to her.)
- Tichy 17y ago
  The change the system language things hardly seems fair. Ubuntu is available in most (all?) languages, and not very cryptic to understand either. In fact it tends to be more logical than Windows. Internet/Email: I tend to solve these issues by putting big fat icons for Firefox and Thunderbird (+Open Office) on the desktop (and also in the "quick launch bar" of course). Desktop background: touche. But people who can't change it on Ubuntu probably can't change it on Windows either? Nephew: true - most people probably switch to Linux because their nephew tells them to do so... So if the nephew is still on Windows, bad luck. Also, maybe a lot of people just buy the netbook with Windows and then install Linux anyway (bagging the free Windows license for later use). Edit: one more thing that is easy to forget: make Open Office to use Microsoft formats by default.
  - Poiesis 17y ago
    You missed the point. It wasn't that Ubuntu isn't localized, it was to attempt to demonstrate the massive frustration users encounter when they don't know how to do anything. I have a Ubuntu netbook, and I'll agree Linux has come a long way, but when I click on the friendly "you have updates" button and then break my wireless, forcing me to track down drivers/packages I don't hold much hope for the common people as it were. It was frustrating to me! The language of typical Linux users is very much different than the language of typical PC users I'd say. The ways we would describe a task are much different and the things you learn on one platform often don't help you on the other. A massive problem too is the fact there's essentially no configuration management among Linux distros, making support a nightmare. What's the GUI going to look like? What's the package manager going to be? Etc, etc. I actually lied. The netbook used to have Ubuntu, now it has OS X. It's easier, even considering the hack to get it on there. Last time I owned a mac was system 7, so it's not like there isn't a learning curve there. It's just that they give a damn about the user experience, and as a general rule will not release unless they know the experience will be good.
    - Tichy 17y ago
      Yes, but my point was that it is not actually so hard to find out how to do stuff on Linux. If you can read the language, you can find the "system settings" menu - much easier than reading japanese. "Normal" stuff that is - obviously if you have to fall back on the average Linux tutorial, download drivers and so on, it is bad. But this shouldn't happen usually. What did you do with the wireless drivers? I would have thought that if a netbook comes with Ubuntu, the proper drivers would be installed.
      - Poiesis 17y ago
        The dell-installed Ubuntu prompted me that there were updates available. I downloaded/installed them, my wireless quit working. It was working before the update.
adamc 17y ago
Users like what is familiar, as far as the OS goes. They aren't using computers to learn new things about computers. They just want to surf the net, email, etc. Every new Linux-specific thing they have to learn is a waste of time. Every familiar app they can't run is a loss.
- Tichy 17y ago
  I must admit, when I set up Ubuntu for friends and family, I make sure to place Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office as icons on the Desktop. I also remove the top bar (I think the two status bars of Gnome are silly). The only difficult thing is scanning, but that is complicated on Windows, too.

philh 17y ago

The eee PC and Aspire One, which I believe are two of the best-selling netbooks, both have horrible distros. I gather netbooks were targeted for doing internet and office, so the disros are optimised for doing that and nothing else. If it turns out most people want to do more with their netbook (which the hardware is certainly capable of), it's no surprise that they would avoid linux when linux makes it difficult for them to do what they want. Does any netbook ship with a non-crippled linux distro? I'd like to see sales figures for that, especially compared to a windows version on the same hardware.

skwiddor 17y ago
I have an EEEPC 901 with Xandros. At first I was quite enamoured with it's distro but it's not that great. The updater fills it up with updates until it runs out of system disk space and I have to reset it, even though I have a 20Gb version (the sysem space is tiny [I don't have it with me so I can't look]). The scheduler isn't very good, scrolling on Firefox comes in bursts and often I think the thing has locked up. Firefox is probably not the best choice because of its bloat (ironic from the light-weight mozilla!). That said, when I ran Plan 9 in Qemu on it, I didn't find any such problems. Web browsing on my G1 is a much nicer experience. I could seriously see Android being a good fit with my EeePc.

DannoHung 17y ago

Linux won't "win" the Desktop until there is a generational leap over other OSes. Linux can't win because everyone else can see what Linux programmers are programming and can copy all the ideas, if not the code outright. I love Linux, don't get me wrong, but it's always going to be a second banana for the consumer.

liuliu 17y ago
I don't see any impact from "commercial" software to Linux. As all the commercial software turns to online service, you have to pay monthly fee in order to use the service. Linux will dominate the network market as it was done in embedded system market because it can easily be customized. Any software value on the customized distro (browser, email or IM) is included in the hardware sales (like decades ago when we sold these "huge" computers).

Herring 17y ago

Why does it matter? This always struck me as a rather useless popularity contest. I'm on ubuntu & except for games*, there isn't a single thing I'd boot vista for. There's one or two long tail apps I'd like to have, but they wouldn't help the linux community much. [^] And seeing how they treat Macs, I don't think game publishers will put up with developing for 3 platforms.

TweedHeads 17y ago

FUD patrol is always protecting netizens from BS like this.

3pt14159 17y ago

I was forced to buy my netbook with windows ("it is the only one we have in stock right now") and I wasn't willing to go through the hassle of getting a $10 refund. I installed the very latest version of Ubuntu and I couldn't be happier. Everything is fast. Really fast. With the 20 some odd terminal commands I know I can install nearly anything I need (except MS Excel :{) and there is no 30 day trial period that I have to be reminded of constantly, no spyware (not that I ever got it anyways), built in programming stuff like compilers. I'm by no means a serious programmer, just a quant that likes to spend his weekends learning about polymorphism. I've had such a good experience that I told my computer illiterate friend that I will build his new computer for him for free, provided that he use Ubuntu for 1 month. This guy doesn't know the difference between the terms "URL" and "Web Browser" but I think that for what he does - movies, chatting, email, surfing - he will have a far better experience. Why? No spyware and a much easier UI.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

He seems somewhat excited by the prospect of linux failing on notebooks, yet I'm sure I read a rash of these articles a while ago when the Q1 numbers got released, then another bunch when the numbers got disputed. What's he adding to the debate now? Nothing that I can see, though it appears he's got some axe to grind about linux on smartphones being better than linux on netbooks.