Okay, guys, with my community leadership hat on: before you read any
further on this, don't take shots at each other, we're all on the same
side here. If you want to argue different points of view, do it in a
civil tone, please don't call people "bogus" or fight with people about
hardware, etc. and don't swear please (even if you obfuscate it - this
is a civil place not a place to fight).
Now, on to my response, WITHOUT my CC hat on. Also without my other
hats on, but I put them all in the signature because I mention them
here, and because it shows the breadth of my exposure to the 'current
community state of mind' at large (i.e. Ask Ubuntu and such).
FIRST, some background on me. I am a long time Ubuntu user, first used
it in 2009, where it massively improved performance on my then Dell
Vostro laptop that I had for college. I admit though I dualbooted -
Linux as primary driver, Windows for gaming or specific Windows only
software. 2012 is when I really got deeper into it and started doing
support on Ask Ubuntu (and hey, I'm also a moderator there now!). 2014
is when I started doing actual development. And then I continued to get
involved deeper and deeper into the Server side of things, then started
maintaining packages, then got full upload privs everywhere in Ubuntu,
leading to me getting positions on the Developer Membership Board,
Lubuntu Team/Council, Community Council, and other positions. And just
as a point, I recently finally applied in Debian for Debian Maintainer
to have upload access to all my packages I maintain (two of them), and
that was approved two days ago, and is waiting for Debian admins to
update my status.
I'm very fluent in Ubuntu and how it works, and know far more than I
want to admit. With this in mind, my responses will be the "Power user
comments on user problems and concerns based on long-term observation of
Ask Ubuntu, user complaints/concerns, etc.
On 3/20/22 11:38, Amit wrote:
Hi,
I was thinking about how to increase the user base of Ubuntu desktop.
More and more people will use Ubuntu desktop if it (GUI, etc.) is easy
to use.
Technically speaking, the GUI *is* easy to use. It's not hard to find
applications with the search bar in vanilla Ubuntu, and the GUI is not
the concern here usually.
First timers and older people should also find Ubuntu desktop easy to
use (having very short learning curve).
Microsoft Windows is there on about 90% of all (computer) systems
mainly because it is very easy to use.
Windows is not a great OS but it is so easy to use that first timers
and older people also use it without much issues.
And herein lies my beginning of countering your statements.
It is **well known** that Ubuntu ISOs are restricted from shipping
certain software or drivers due to legal constraints. Windows has legal
agreements to install special Windows fonts, software, etc. and install
codecs for DVDs, etc. from other companies. Ubuntu and the Open Source
world (including Debian, etc.) don't have those legal agreements and
therefore are restricted from shipping certain binary drivers, etc. and
other software that would normally be available in Windows.
Windows has been a dominant market share since **the dawn**. I was born
in 1990. In Kindergarten, we had old 5.5inch floppy disk computers that
we had to boot those disks to for software. In 1st through 3rd grade,
we had Windows 3.1 on old IBM systems for use for school emails between
staff. In 4th grade, systems started being upgraded to Windows 95.
Then 98. Then 2000 by the time I was in middle school (6-8th grade).
Then XP through high school. ME was kinda skipped in the school world.
The only other competitor was Apple, which in the timespan Windows grew
had a lag before it had any significant market share.
In comparison to "Hey it's ready off the shelf!" Windows and Apple
environments, initial UNIX (and later Linux) builds were not GUI
oriented, were mostly CLI, had server gearing, and were used by
'techies' who weren't held to the same level as 'consumer users' as they
needed high technical skills to use it.
Then enter GUI Linux. The large GUI linux stuff started to kick in
around here in the 2000s, with RHEL being around and used in tech
colleges for special projects. In fact, when I first went off to
college in 2009, Carnegie Mellon University had primarily Windows
endpoint systems connected into the RHEL/UNIX backends that powered the
core. I haven't been back at CMU since 2010 because I changed
universities and had a job since then once I graduated Penn State, but
my understanding is they still have RHEL labs, and also now support Macs.
Beyond the Windows market share problem, we *all* are aware of hardware
support problems. Wifi card drivers that're on the ISOs don't get
installed properly for certain wifi hardware chipsets, leaving people
without the ability to use their systems post-install and unable to get
downloads (hint: the laptops / mobile computing markets nowadays
**generally do not ship systems with Ethernet anymore**, leaving
"Connect your cable for Internet to get drivers" more or less the
dinosaur). When you visit Ask Ubuntu and look at the most active posts,
you see a huge portion of them are nVidia, AMD, or networking driver
problems. The drivers issue there is the key problem, solving the
problems is not as straightforward as downloading the updated drivers
via Windows Update which needs no user intervention other than
connecting to a network connection, and because of the 'driver problems'
and 'hardware compatibility' (which i'll give you recent use case
problems about!) issues, it's deemed that "Ubuntu is too hard for the
average use case" by the broader world at large. And then people expand
that to be "Linux" because they don't know the differences between
systems / environments.
I mentioned 'hardware compatibility'. At my FT job at the beginning of
the COVID pandemic, we needed to come up with a way to keep systems
secure so intel analysts at my job could access Corporate resources
*and* non-corporate resources in a secure way. We're a Windows house
with session hosts typically, but we have Linux environments for
research systems. We have a mix of Dell and HP systems that are mobile
systems / laptops at this time. We rolled a 'hybrid' solution - RDWeb
for remote desktop web access on the session hosts on the web browser,
coupled with an NGINX frontend in front of it that required SSL Client
Certificates to even get access. Those client certs were issued by IT
per-system and installed accordingly. And voila, that solution worked.
We've since moved to MS365 and Azure gateways with Microsoft + 2FA auth,
but the point still stands - we came up with an Ubuntu driven solution
for the endpoint systems. However, while the Dell laptops behaved
swimmingly, the HP systems took at least 3 days of me as a sysadmin
beating it into submission to get it to behave, and it came to a
roundabout way to make it work with the UEFI stuff. Once we got that
working, though, forcing it into legacy mode (the HP UEFI did not
support UEFI mode with Ubuntu, and we couldn't turn off secure boot
because of the way HP did their BIOS) allowed us to deploy the solution
in mass.
However, getting those systems working was a pain, and it required
training of our IT support guy and the windows sysadmin and a few other
volunteers to mass image the systems and set them up. We finally got it
all done though, and up until late last year that was the "work from
home" solution during COVID. We've since moved on, but you can imagine
the difficulty an 'average user' might have installing Ubuntu in those
situations where the hardware is not default compatible and needs
'technical experience' to find the solution. And that solution worked
for FT job but might not work the next day for new people.
The current default GUI of Ubuntu desktop is not very user friendly.
I think you need to justify this argument. The Ubuntu desktop *is*
quite user friendly nowadays, and with an assortment of other DEs to use
with flavors of Ubuntu, there's other UIs they can use.
But, it is for certain that if we want to increase the user base of
Ubuntu desktop then we have to make it (GUI, etc.) easy to use just
like Windows or even easier than Windows.
It's not just a GUI/UI issue, there's legal issues and concerns, and
'hardware' level concerns from certain hardware that make this a large
hurdle. Not to mention the long-standing compatibility and marketing
agreements between Microsoft and off the shelf vendors to ship Microsoft.
Regards,
Amit
Thomas
------
(NOTE: The statements and opinions in the above email, unless otherwise
stated, do not reflect any specific role or leadership position I hold,
nor any positions I hold as a developer or elsewhere - the roles are
mentioned here which I have only to reflect the scope of my 'reach' and
observations)
Ubuntu Member
Ask Ubuntu Moderator
Lubuntu Council Member and Lubuntu Team Lead
Ubuntu Core Developer
Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Member
Ubuntu Server Team Member
Ubuntu Community Council Member
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