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Remarkable Ubuntu Poll

Alessandro17

By Alessandro17,
in Linux - *nix

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Alessandro17
Alessandro17
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http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=580852

 

Over 35% of respondents had major problems either with upgrades or fresh installs.

I wonder how many of them were first time users who equate Ubuntu with Linux and went back to Windows.

On the other hand, only for about 21% of users Gutsy Gibbon worked flawlessly. That is very low and I am pretty sure that other distros would fare a lot better.

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Gerry-W
Gerry-W
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I know, I tried Gutsy, still on my hard drive. It has come a long way but is still miles behind Windows and Os X for end user experience.

 

I have yet to find a linux distro that has a polished feel that is more than icons and wallpapers.

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Alessandro17
Alessandro17
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I know, I tried Gutsy, still on my hard drive. It has come a long way but is still miles behind Windows and Os X for end user experience.

 

I have yet to find a linux distro that has a polished feel that is more than icons and wallpapers.

 

Have you tried openSUSE, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS? They are some of the best.

Also Debian testing is very nice, but I recommend it only to the more advanced users.

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Azurael
Azurael
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What is your problem with Ubuntu? You've really got a bee in your bonnet, haven't you?

 

Like most OSS advocates, you are a zealous fanboy right to the point of telling people what's right and wrong! No wonder the OSS community has so many fractures, split projects, etc and takes so long to progress despite having such a a large development community.

 

I'm sure if I spent 5 minutes, I'm sure I could find evidence that large numbers of people are having problems installing OpenBloat... Sorry, OpenSuSE, Debian, Mandriva, Zenwalk, Yellow Dog, TurboLinux, PCLinuxOS, Gentoo, Slackware, whatever.... FreeBSD? Solaris? Windows? MacOS? People only generally post negative experiences online. It's not a good way to judge user experience.

 

I'm off to try Zenwalk.

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Alessandro17
Alessandro17
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What is your problem with Ubuntu? You've really got a bee in your bonnet, haven't you?

 

Like most OSS advocates, you are a zealous fanboy right to the point of telling people what's right and wrong! No wonder the OSS community has so many fractures, split projects, etc and takes so long to progress despite having such a a large development community.

 

I'm sure if I spent 5 minutes, I could find evidence that large numbers of people are having problems installing OpenBloat... Sorry, OpenSuSE, Debian, Mandriva, Zenwalk, Yellow Dog, TurboLinux, PCLinuxOS, Gentoo, Slackware, whatever.... FreeBSD? Solaris? Windows? MacOS? People only generally post negative experiences online. It's not a good way to judge user experience.

 

I'm off to try Zenwalk.

 

And what is wrong with you? I have only posted the results of a poll. And yes, I don't like Ubuntu, and it is the only "thing" open source I dislike, because I have been smelling something fishy from day one. And with all the goodwill, it has always been buggy as hell. I don't want new Linux users to get the wrong impression.

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Shagbag
Shagbag
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Interesting poll with a good response rate. So 2 out of 3 users either had no problems or had a few that could be fixed. Considering the diversity of hardware linux runs on, it's not bad I suppose. Granted, not as good as windoze, but then OEMs rarely support linux by providing drivers like they do windoze. I don't think you can compare it to OSX. Apple controls the hardware so, naturally, it's going to work 100%, all of the time on Mac hardware. OSX on a non-Mac? Now, that's something completely different.

 

I thought Ubuntu 7.10 was alright. I had an Xorg issue due to an esoteric graphics card (VIA Unichrome Pro II). Gutsy was okay, but as they say on the Archlinux forums "they always come back". For me, I have yet to discover a distro that meets my needs like Archlinux does.

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Ayanami
Ayanami
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I know, I tried Gutsy, still on my hard drive. It has come a long way but is still miles behind Windows and Os X for end user experience.

 

I have yet to find a linux distro that has a polished feel that is more than icons and wallpapers.

 

 

Hmm...I've never had real problems with a Linux OS itself. I used openSuSE 10.2 for a while, but had internet problems. I had Elive on my Mac for a while too. Only thing I've never liked about Linux is the lack of GUI development. I've said it a million times, but it feels like I'm moving back to Windows 98.

 

I mean, we want eye candy.

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Alessandro17
Alessandro17
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Only thing I've never liked about Linux is the lack of GUI development. I've said it a million times, but it feels like I'm moving back to Windows 98.

 

I mean, we want eye candy.

 

I really don't understand how you can say that.

Have a look here:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=68916 post #7

(And that is only one random example).

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~pcwiz
~pcwiz
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I don't know. I installed Ubuntu 6.06 and played with it for a couple of days but it got boring and I went back to good ol' Windows XP..I guess I'm not a linux person. I also tried Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn on a virtual machine and it was still boring.

 

To me, linux, while a good OS, it doesn't matter what distro I use I just can't get used to it. I have to use either Windows or Mac OS X. Its not that I don't feel comfortable with linux as OS X is part Linux itself but I dunno...its a feeling I can't put a finger on.

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Cliffton Beach
Cliffton Beach
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On the other hand, only for about 21% of users Gutsy Gibbon worked flawlessly.

This is what happens when you aim your distro at newbies. That is to say when you aim to attract new users from Windows land with your distro. You end up with a lot of people who don't know what they are doing. Linux just isn't ready for primetime yet, unless someone does like Apple and sells a limited set of hardware preloaded with Linux. As long as it has to work on any of millions of hardware combos, it isn't ready, not for Joe Average anyway. And that's exactly who Ubuntu is attracting.

 

I'm sure most distros would have similar results if they had the sheer volume of Linux newbs giving them a try. Ubuntu works well I think, but there is IMHO slightly too much hype, attracting people who really aren't ready for Linux yet (or vice versa). That will help them improve but I'm not sure it helps the image of Linux too much.

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bonestonne
bonestonne
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i'm only keeping Ubuntu because it holds my bootloader. once i get a new drive, it'll be time to work out the kinks.

 

Ubuntu 7.10 i think was too fast of an upgrade. i don't use it as much as i used to use Ubuntu, which is a sad fact. on my system [3.2ghz dual core, 3gb of RAM, SATA-I hard drive] i shouldn't be seeing the 1-2minute lockups that Gutsy has. i'd understand a little if it was my P3 Xeon server, but not this. i'm running the kind of hardware that i shouldn't be seeing an issue with, but i had a perfect configuration with Feisty, and it makes me a little annoyed that i updated to Gutsy so soon.

 

next distro to try out: Gentoo or Slackware.

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Hagar
Hagar
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As someone who tries out damn near any OS I can get my hands on, I've run stacks of linux distros for different purposes. I've had mixed experiences with ubuntu, but...

 

Ubuntu is big, it is a big deal, because with all the faults & issues it may have, it is, in my experience, the *ONLY* distro that has actually moved long-term windows users permanently to linux.

 

I know people who run all manner of things, but they are geeks with interest & knowledge. Only Ubuntu has actually penetrated into real-world users (not "superusers") in my real life.

 

Now, Ubuntu is in a dip at the moment.. waves of adulation & criticism have washed over it periodically, and it remains to be seen if it will straighten out after its current slew of bugs & detractors. Who knows, maybe something else will take its crown, but it isn't the biggest linux distro out there for nothing.

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Alessandro17
Alessandro17
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Ubuntu is big, it is a big deal, because with all the faults & issues it may have, it is, in my experience, the *ONLY* distro that has actually moved long-term windows users permanently to linux.

 

Hagar

 

That is exactly one of my main worries. If Ubuntu is the only distro most Windows user try (and that seems to be a fact), and the satisfied users are less than 21%, that is IMO nothing short of a disaster. Heck, the pre-Ubuntu Linspire, Xandros or Mandriva (only to mention distributions meant for Windows switchers) managed to do a lot better than that.

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Hagar
Hagar
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Hagar

 

That is exactly one of my main worries. If Ubuntu is the only distro most Windows user try (and that seems to be a fact), and the satisfied users are less than 21%, that is IMO nothing short of a disaster. Heck, the pre-Ubuntu Linspire, Xandros or Mandriva (only to mention distributions meant for Windows switchers) managed to do a lot better than that.

 

I feel you missed my point.. these paople may well have tried other linuxes in the past, but always gone back to windows. Ubuntu is the only one I have ever seen that makes any of them stay at all. 21% is an immense success in that perspective.

 

In the admittedly limited scope that is my personal experience, other distros score 0.

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Alessandro17
Alessandro17
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In the admittedly limited scope that is my personal experience, other distros score 0.

 

I believe this deserves a better analysis, even if I should contradict myself in doing so.

I am an avid reader of Linux forums and sites in general.

How many categories of Windows switchers are there?

Let's say that there are 3.

1)The ones who try Linux because it is fashionable to do so. These are quite a few, in my personal experience (talking about people I know). Admittedly the vast majority of this category will try Ubuntu (but not all of them).

2)People who get persuaded by friends or relatives to replace Windows with Linux. This category will install whatever distribution gets recommended to them, and that is not always Ubuntu, believe me.

3)Power users, who get enough of Windows or simply want to try a new OS. By definition, this category won't go with the mass. They'll get informed, they'll try several distros, and finally they'll decide what to use. That is approximately what happened to me. As soon as I was connected to broadband I tried 2 distros in 2 days : Red Hat (I definitely didn't like it) and Mandrake.

I stayed with Mandrake for a while, but at the same time I began to try virtually every distro available at the time. In the end I came to the conclusion that SUSE and Debian suited my needs better than Mandrake.

If I had started after Ubuntu became popular, probably Ubuntu might have been my first distro, but definitely not the one I stayed with.

So, I believe that distros other than Ubuntu score a lot better than 0 :wacko: (regarding people who stay with them).

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