Linux Desktop Readiness Thread

[vexorian]

I must say that I don-t like the fact all threads that somehow relate to this get merged to this thread.

[prizrak]

1. New multimedia strategy

I'm sorry, but the current codecs approach isn't working. To make it immediately accessible to new users, just for once we need an entirely new Ubuntu Media Player. This would recognise music filetypes instantly and offer to download restricted codecs. All audio and video files should open in this player by default.

Feisty already does that unless I'm missing something.

2. Modify Nautilus to support persistent copying

I don't want to have to open two file manager windows to transfer files between folders - I want to copy it, press back a few times, press Paste and it appears.

Seems to work just fine here.

3. Offer a Windows compatibility mode

Like KDE but simpler, wouldn't it be better for transitioning users to select a compatibility option that sets Ctrl+Alt+Del to System monitor, etc.?

What does that have to do with Ubuntu? That is a Gnome default and that is their design choice. I have not met a Windows user who couldn't figure out how to use Gnome.

4. Wireless networking that works

Please.

That's hit or miss and with supported card I don't have a problem. You are barking up the wrong tree here, while Network-Manager should be improved in certain areas biggest issue is drivers. Linux hackers done a great job with this so far but nothing beats OEM support.

5. Help files

If you won't improve the coverage or accessibility of the help file text, at least direct users to Canonical paid support to increase funding for the project as a whole.

Have you ever even clicked on "Help and support"?

6. Make it even more obvious partitioning destroys data

For people that don't know what effect installing a new OS will have, the graphical installer's warnings need to be made even more visible

How more obvious could it possibly get? Are we trying to make an OS for human beings of mentally challenged?

7. Increase searching speed

You're competing with instant search from Mac OS X and Windows.

Ever heard of Beagle? Believe me MS instant search is pretty damn far from instant (or useful)

8. Improve the base filestructure

I have this file on my desktop called sda1 that contains unopenable shadow copies of my Windows partition. I don't want to see that. I want to have a "virtual drive" on the filestructure for one partition and a "virtual drive" for my Ubuntu files.

What does that have to with file structure? It's a problem with mounting your Windows partition.

9. Tell me where I can open my applications from

It could be made more obvious where the programs I install can actually be opened from - I install a package and then spend 5 mins. finding its launcher. Add it to the Ubuntu menu or something.

That is an application packaging issue not Ubuntu. An application has to provide a .desktop file in order for the launcher to get added to the menu. From What I have seen there have been quite a bit of improvement in that area.

10. Wine as part of the OS

Just accept that Linux will never be popular and certainly never the sole operating system among average computer users unless Linux runs Windows binaries. Make .exe/.bin files open with Wine. Include Wine on the installer. Have a development team actively contribute to Wine. Put Wine on the auto-updater. Add Wine's download server to the default APT listings.

I don't run Windows binaries and seem to not have a single issue. Wine is already in the repos if you want it. Moreover it's far from perfect, I couldn't get Starcraft to even install and that is a very old program. Simple fact is that Wine is far from being a solution to not being able to run Windows binaries, to make matters worse it mostly runs popular stuff. Considering that popular stuff tends to have a Linux native alternative anyway there doesn't seem to be much of a point. It's the obscure or specialized applications that rarely get Linux alternatives (or at least not as full featured) and will also not run in Wine.

You, like others before you make the mistake of thinking that:
1) An OS's technical quality has a damn thing to do with it's market success.
2) Everyone has same needs, hardware, etc... as you do. Simple fact is that out of all the people I know 90% of them would be completely fine using Ubuntu if they had bought one of the new Dell boxes. Simply put Ubuntu is not for everyone (neither is Windows or OS X for that matter) and you have to choose features that are important to you personally while dealing with the flaws. That's not to say that there is nothing to be improved in Ubuntu and other disro's, there are plenty.

I must say that I don-t like the fact all threads that somehow relate to this get merged to this thread.

1) We've heard all this before multiple times, for evidence you can just look at this thread.
2) Devs don't read the user forum they are too busy making a kick *** OS for us.
3) 99.9% of these suggestions are pure garbage basically asking us to make Ubuntu into Windows or are plain impossible to implement (like hardware support for certain things).

[forrestcupp]

If you really want instant search in Windows, you have to install something like Google Desktop and index your drive. This is no different than installing Beagle in Linux and indexing your files with it.

Almost all application executables are either put in /usr/bin (short for binary file), or /usr/games. How hard is that to find? It's not any harder than C:\Program Files, then searching through all of the subfolders in that directory hoping to figure out which exe is the right one to start a program.

[vexorian]

1) We've heard all this before multiple times, for evidence you can just look at this thread.
2) Devs don't read the user forum they are too busy making a kick *** OS for us.
3) 99.9% of these suggestions are pure garbage basically asking us to make Ubuntu into Windows or are plain impossible to implement (like hardware support for certain things).

I know, but it is still pretty confusing and this thread has got like 761 pages? Not to mention that The original intend seems to be a poll while it is full of posts that are complaints... I think that a forum for complaints would have been good or renaming this thread into "complaints" or something.

[prizrak]

I know, but it is still pretty confusing and this thread has got like 761 pages? Not to mention that The original intend seems to be a poll while it is full of posts that are complaints... I think that a forum for complaints would have been good or renaming this thread into "complaints" or something.

We used to have Testimonials section but I guess it works better this way. I say that you should pitch that idea in the forum discussion section where the mods hang out

[julian67]

If you have a supported network card then networking and especially wifi is now superb with Network Manager in several distros including Feisty. I have an Asus laptop (which works fine with no restricted drivers) with OEM XP Pro pre-installed and it has Intel Proset to manage the wireless connections under Windows. I can't get it to work with WPA TKIP using Intel's own gui, but using Ubuntu on the same machine it detected the network, prompted me for the passphrase, I typed it, it stored it in the gnome-keyring and simultaneously i was connected. It took maybe 10 or 15 seconds and was flawless. I have to say that it was also this easy within Windows when i disabled the Intel tools, but overall I prefer the network-manager and gnome-keyring combination for storing keys as this way they are both secure and easily accessible to me, whereas in Windows the keys are obscured from the legitimate user and far too easily accessed using cracking/security testing tools. I also have a Lenovo laptop which works just as nicely and has all hardware supported out of the box in Ubuntu except a volume rocker switch which requires a Win binary driver (!) but the volume hotkeys work anyway.

I think most of the criticisms outlined are invalid, and have more to do with unfamiliarity and some misunderstanding/user error than anything else. I'd slightly agree that copying and pasting is occasionally a little frustrating but on the other hand when I use Windows I can't have stuff copied merely by highlighting.....everything is click click click and rather slow and the pasting is one time only whereas in Gnome it's repeatable indefinitely, so both methods have some weaknesses and it isn't a major issue, just something to know/remember.

[hellomeow]

And it is Windows. It is that simple.

Why do people make this so complicated? Why do have a 700+ page thread with pointless debates? The answer is clear: it is Windows, and only it.

When a user won't use the command line, who do we have to blame? Windows, naturally one of the only operating systems with use of such an interface seemingly discouraged. You know, its almost as if Microsoft wants to make users use an operating system just like theirs.

"I want to play Counter Strike!" exclaims a hopeless new Ubuntu user. "Ubuntu doesn't have something exactly like it, so I will run away and cry!!!!!"

Some drivers aren't available for Ubuntu. Why? Because companies don't care to release them, not, at least, when 90% of their market is using Windows!

"Ggharfjxljfkl;jgl;djsf;ajklaj!!" cries Mr. Office Professional, after finding out that (insert minor feature here) is not available for OpenOffice. Judging by the ensuing reckless head-pounding and office property smashing, it does not appear that Ubuntu would be quite ideal. Where did Mr. O. Professional find (insert minor feature here)? He found it in Windows, silly.

"I must have (insert media player or multimedia codecs here) so that I can listen to Senses Fail!!" asserts the typical high-schooler. He can't listen to Senses Fail (or He Is Legend, for that matter) because all of the songs he downloaded off Lime Wire weren't in Ogg format. And why would he downloaded them in any formats besides the quality options available, such as WMA? Windows doesn't play Ogg by default....

"Even worse," the high-schooler continues, "my pink and black Myspace profile looks so horrible! It looked fine in IE after I dumped those 250 lines of CSS or whatever that is I copied from freecoolmyspacelayouts.free.fr into my About Me section!!!"

When an unfortunate new user gets ready to vent his frustrations on the Ubuntu message boards to let everyone know about all of Ubuntu's problems (which are there because he or she says they are, darn it!), he will take the word "Windows" and complexify it to create numerous paragraphs. Let's take a look at the the-reasons-why-you-think-you-hate-Ubuntu-and-the-reasons-why-you-REALLY-hate-Ubuntu table:

______________

Reason: "The command line is too hard! T_T"
Real reason: "In Windows, I am used to not using the command line."

Reason: "My hardware isn't detected!!"
Real reason: "I decided to buy hardware only for Windows. Silly me."

Reason: "I don't wanna edit text files!!"
Real reason: "I have not learned to use text editors or edit text files, because I have used Windows."

Reason: "I want to play games."
Real reason: "I want to play games on Ubuntu, but I can't because some overwhelming percentage of the Earth's population uses Windows. So I will get a Wii and get over myself now, if I want to continue to use Linux, that is."
______________


It is clear. Every reason you don't like Ubuntu can be drawn back to that essential obstacle, Windows. All posts about this matter which don't simply contain the word "Windows" are redundant.

I am the same way. Because there are these small, little things that are missing in Linux, I continue to use the very operating system I grew up with and have banished Debian to my server, where it awaits faithfully for my Filezilla sftp connection request.

So please, stop wasting valuable disk space on the Ubuntu servers by keeping the Linux Desktop Readiness Thread. Delete, and subsequently shred it, to ensure that it can never be recovered somehow. Then make a sticky containing EXACTLY these words:

______________

Here is the reason why you don't like Ubuntu

windows
______________


and end it there. As a matter of fact, it is time to deprecate even the concept of messing around. From now on, the Ubuntu mods must screen all comments being made right as they are being typed. Upon the slightest evidence that post might involve criticism of Ubuntu, forcefully redirect the newly enlightened user's browser to the post above. "OOOOHHHH!!!" the newly enlightened user will exclaim as he drops to his knees. "Now, I finally understand."

[DR_K13]

[@trophy]

Whoa, dude... I want you to reduce your daily intake of caffeine by about half, ok?

As for what you said... you're absolutely right about some people not liking anything that's different. The question is, what do you want to do about it? Cause the way I see it, you have three choices:

1: Abandon them. If these clueless lusers don't have the cognitive capacity to intuitively understand how to compile device drivers then they are dead weight and Linux is better off without them. Only those who are worthy of such a great operating system may accompany us in our valiant struggle against mediocrity.

2: Make Linux exactly like Windows, down to the smallest detail, so that these users have a perfectly seamless transition, and years later they may not even know they're running Linux. Sacrifices must be made on the road to total world domination!

3: Accept the fact that the incumbancy of Windows is a problem for us, and work around it. They're used to downloading WMAs because that's what they've done before. They're used to using Microsoft Office because that's what they've used before. Getting mad at them is both pointless and counterproductive. Microsoft has a vested interest in making sure they never get beyond that stage, and Microsoft's behavior in this area will get worse as they become more threatened by Linux. The best we can do is create better products and try to educate people about why they're better.

I don't know about you, but I'm gonna have to go with #3.

[Fenryr]

Gee, SOMEONE got up on the wrong side of the coprocessor this morning...RELAX...dude...Take a moment...BREATHE...Again...Now, put down that axe...*l*