Rob's Blog

A few weeks ago I wrote a short couple of paragraphs on Ubuntu Linux and how easy it was to install for the home user. That’s all fine and dandy, but would a home user be able to cope with something so different? Was I able to cope with it as my main OS?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. As much as I’d like to say “yes, Ubuntu should be put onto the desktop of every new PC”, I’m afraid I simply can’t. Why’s that? It comes down to the same thing that has always plagued Linux; usability.

I focussed my evaluation on what a usual home user would use their PC for. For this example I was quite fair – I took my relatively tech-savvy kid sister as an example. She uses her PC to surf the web, send instant messages, send and receive e-mail, load up her iPod with mp3s, manage photos from her digital camera in PhotoShop, watch movie clips and DVDs and occasionally uses a word processor. So how did Ubuntu stack up?

First off, Ubuntu comes with Firefox 2.0 as standard. Now, I use this as my primary web browser in Windows so it can’t be any different, right? Wrong. In Windows it’s as stable as anything. It very rarely crashes and when it does, you usually get told why and asked if you want to continue your session when the application restarts. In Ubuntu 6.10? Not a chance. Open up a fairly standard web page (I was looking at the BBC) and the Firefox window disappears. Hmm. Open it up again, open the page, bang, crashed. That’s a bit of a pain in the arse. Switched back to my Windows installation (thinking it may be the website), opened the same page in the same browser and… it worked perfectly. That’s a bit rubbish.

Next up, plugin installation in Firefox. Yes, Flash worked brilliantly. Superb! I was expecting it to completely fail but it really beat out my expectations; a big thumbs-up. Unfortunately seconds later I tried to install Java. Firefox couldn’t install it and the “click here for more information” link crashed the browser. Great. So, being enterprising I thought I’d go to Sun’s Java site and see if I could get it to install; not a chance. At this point I gave up – I know if I’d have spent another five or ten minutes I would have gotten it installed (perhaps with some help from here) but to be honest I know that for the average user the PC would be across the room by now. The first, probably most important thing a home PC needs to do – surf the web – and it fails miserably. This absolutely shocked me as I use Firefox daily with no problems on Windows.

Next up I thought I’d try GAIM – the Instant Messaging software in Ubuntu. I’d used it before and found it quite nice and relatively easy to use several years ago. I’m not sure what’s changed, but all of a sudden it seems less intuitive to use. I added my accounts (one Windows Live Messenger and one Yahoo! Messenger) but bizarrely the Yahoo! one failed to sign in. I was given the option of trying again, which I did (I’m not too proud to admit that I may sometimes mistype passwords) – but this failed. Okay, not too worried about it failing, but what did annoy me was that I then had no further option to have another attempt. I was disconnected from Yahoo! with no way of being able to get it to reconnect that I could obviously see. Maybe not a show stopper but it sure annoyed the hell out of me. Two tests done – two black marks. Not looking good!

Unfortunately I don’t have an iPod or digital camera at the moment so I couldn’t test how Ubuntu handles these. I know a lot of people who swear by the GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) but personally I’ve always preferred PhotoShop. I can’t mark that down as Ubuntu’s fault though; I’m sure the average home user could get by with it.

The next thing I did try and do was play an mp3 file. Nope, not happening, sorry. Ubuntu does not provide any audio or video codecs whatsoever with its distribution. Now I’ll put my hands up here and say I have absolutely no idea about licensing. I don’t know the why’s and the wherefore’s. However I do know that I can install Windows XP (discounting the ‘N’ versions which no-one buys anyway) and be listening to an mp3 as soon as the OS is installed. To be fair to Ubuntu it does prompt you to install an mp3 codec, which is nice, but an extra step that the home user could do without.

Unfortunately I can’t say the same for videos. Ubuntu’s default media player just completely refuses to play anything; again down to having no codecs, but unfortunately there’s no pretty prompt to help you. The same goes for DVD playback. Again, the home user here would probably be stuffed – yet again the solution requires some obscure command-line hacks (here for anyone who wants to know). Yes, I know I could do that quite easily; I even know what all those commands mean. But I think the average home user would be taking their PC back to the shop and saying “give me one that works”. At this point I gave up the evaluation; I didn’t bother with Evolution (an Outlook-style e-mail client and PIM) nor with OpenOffice as my experience doing the simple things had already become a chore.
In all, I’m bitterly disappointed with Ubuntu. Billed as one of the most usable Linux installs for the home user I was expecting great things from it. Unfortunately it took me an hour or so of hacking to get it the way I wanted it and even then it wasn’t exactly smooth and stable. What worries me most is I know what I’m doing!

Overall? I’d rather pay the £100 or so Windows tax on my PC and get something that works. What I’d really like to happen would be for Apple to say “here’s Mac OS X to buy for any PC you like” as I’d snap it up in a shot. The bottom line is I want something that works, perfectly, out of the box. A home user would get their £300/£400 PC home and expect it to do their music stuff, surf the web and to be able to use IM/e-mail perfectly. I’m afraid to say Ubuntu (and Linux in general) is still nowhere near the same league as Apple and Microsoft’s operating systems. Shame, but there it is. If I can be bothered I may try Mandriva 2007 (of which I’ve heard very good things) although as I resume working on the 2nd of January I highly doubt I’ll have the time to.
I think I’ll still hang on to my Linux servers though…