Posts by Alfonso Garcia-Patiño Barbolani 5 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jul 2009
Mmmmm.... this is strange. I tried this afternoon the 9.04->9.10 upgrade on the exact same hardware that gave me problems this morning. Surprise, absolutely no problems. My problems therefore were related to some package that one machine has and the other does not.
Score for me now is Flawless 2 - Slightly problematic 1
Ubuntu 9.10 on Acer A150, clean install -> flawless
KUbuntu 9.10 on homemade desktop (that was running 9.04 fine), upgrade -> aborted in the middle of the upgrade with a message saying that kdesudo crashed.
The upgrade window went blank and I forced the window close. Now, being an old time upgrader, I knew that the worst thing I could do was reboot. I first killed all running processes related to the upgrade and ran sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. I got a message saying that I had to run dpkg --configure -a as there were things not consistent.
Did that, after a while it finished, rebooted and now I'm posting this from my happily running upgraded 9.10. And finally Amarok has regained its iPod abilities lost in the 2.0 upgrade.
Upgrading to Koala is not something for grandma, certainly. One of Ubuntu's strongest points was its ability to upgraded without disruption. This heritage has been lost, unless Debian upgrades are also so traumatic these days.
If Microsoft starts to talk about HW and SW compatibility, they risk entering a minefield. Because depending on the machine and the software you're using, the user experience can be from fantastic to an absolute nightmare, And that's true both in Windows and Linux.
In Linux, older hardware runs better than in Winodws, that is if Windows runs it at all. As an example, I'm writing this on an Acer A150 netbook running Ubuntu 9.04. When I got it, last xMas, it took me more than a week to make 8.10 work. When 9.04 came out, it was a painless experience. My old TV card keeps working in Linux since five years ago, but stopped working in XP. Newer HW can, in contrast, lack the necessary drivers. My TDT USB stick TV tuner still does not work under Linux but works in XP (the drivers are being written as we speak by the wonderful kernellabs team)
Windows iTunes is a dog compared to Linux Amarok, for example, provided that you don't want to purchase music. P2P? A piece of cake under Linux, a spyware/malware feast under Windows. Let's not talk about the plethora of server software that runs and keeps running under Linux after simple installs and the ordeal that is to create the same setup in Windows. But Windows still runs Office much better than Linux plus Wine and OpenOffice still lacks some functionality for enterprise level Office things.
Microsoft are not being objective, they know that. What the sales rep know is another story.
For a product to win the hearts of the consumers, not the technically minded ones, it has to be perceived as "better" in all dimensions they care about. So they have to work on the aesthetics and usability as well as the underlying rendering engine, Javascript performance, etc.
My perception is that FF is already over IE in the technical areas. Yes, it's not perfect. Yes, it could be better. But is already perceived as better by consumers. It is logical then to focus on appearance and usability. I agree that if you keep doing that only you'll stagnate and die, but it's not bad to have some time devoted to eye candy.
For a proof of the argument, look at Ubuntu. Already superior to anything MS has behind the desktop, yet people keep saying that they don't switch because of usability problems. Would not then make sense for Ubuntu to focus on usability?
Mind you, on functionality it already beats IE hands down, why not attack the remaining angles?
Although if those folks are really targeting widespread enterprise wide adoption they should officially support some form of integration with Windows policies.
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