Is Ubuntu a Serious Desktop Contender?

Exter-C asks: "2006 was the year that a large amount of people started to talk Ubuntu as a possible contender for the Enterprise Linux desktop. There are several key issues that have to be raised: Is Ubuntu/Canonical really capable of maintaining Dapper Drake (6.06 LTS) for 5 years? I know this is not a new question but the evidence after 6 months seems to be negative. A case in point is the 4-5+ day delay for critical updates to packages like Firefox. Given that such a large percentage of people use their desktop systems on the web critical, browser vulnerabilities seem to be one of the core pieces of a secure desktop environment (user stupidity excluded). Can Ubuntu/Canonical really compete with the likes of Red Hat, who had patches available (RHSA-2006:0758) the day that the updates came out?"

Re:These aren't the big issues at all

[Bastard of Subhumani]

.NET hobbyist. Can't comment as I don't really understand what you mean. What is a ".NET hobbyist"?

Sounds like a contradiction in terms. [wikipedia.org]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:These aren't the big issues at all

[jdh41]

I gave Windows XP Professional a try as my home desktop for 3 days a while ago, but switched back to linux finally for a number of reasons:

1) I got sick to death of having to install different programs to burn CDs correctly, with the drag and drop interface terribly annoying and confusing.
2) A lot of software I like as a programming hobbiest is not easily available with a simple command like apt-get install
3) I hate to say it, but virtual desktops and fluxbox leave my desktop a lot less cluttered and much easier to work with than windows does out of the box, and my computer is under load from its graphics a lot less often
4) Things like configuring wireless interfaces were endlessly confusing. Theres about 4 different places to enter a wireless key - but only one of them accepts my home key, as the rest claim it is too long! With linux I just typed it in and it worked.
5) Linux has far more easily accessible and non-crapware solutions available to be easily installed from a secure and trusted source.

The final thing which did it was when I wanted to play a video - WMP has gone through many funcitonality decrements over the years, and when I finally switched to mplayer it coped a lot better with partially missing files, keyboard shortcuts and general niceness than the MS equivilant.

Windows is a best a memory hog of a contendor at this stage, while linux is fast and nible, but with the true power of unix behind it.

Firefox critical updates?

[bazorg]

I'm struggling to understand what kind of Firefox security updates can be deemed critical for a linux user... what kind of malware and exploits are they talking about there?

Re:ATTENTION SLASHDOTTERS

[kripkenstein]

Thank you for that calm voice of reason. Here is my answer to the actual question put forth:

The only evidence given for the claim is the issue of 4-5 day delays for Firefox patches on Ubuntu, versus same-day response for Red Hat. Now, this is a good point, and Canonical should improve in this respect. However, 2 things should be said: (1) Microsoft does not seem to reply very quickly to critical vulnerabilities - not that this is an excuse, but it does go to show that a few days' wait isn't enough to make something 'not a serious desktop' (even when 99% of vulnerabilities are for that particular platform), and (2) Canonical has recently reached an arrangement with the Mozilla people about using Firefox on Ubuntu; unlike Debian, Ubuntu will ship with a nearly-identical version of Firefox to the original Mozilla code. This may allow faster security responses in the future (by distributing the Mozilla patches more or less directly - Debian will have more work to do, since their version is more different). However, in the long term, Firefox 1.5 (shipped on Ubuntu 6.06) will eventually not be supported by Mozilla, leaving the burden to Canonical. Whether they can deal with backporting security patches (or writing completely new ones, if needed), for various versions of Firefox simultaneously, is an open question. Yet, Debian will be doing so (and for even longer periods of time), so they may be able to lean on that.

My wife likes it...

[Yaddoshi]

My wife, who knows almost nothing about computers beyond web-browsing, e-mail and instant messaging, prefers Ubuntu to Windows. For her the system is more reliable, she doesn't have the same fear of accidentally going to a bad website and infecting her computer with spyware or viruses, and it does everything she wants it to do. She's been using Ubuntu since version 5.04, and does not even want Windows installed on her laptop.

That being said, I absolutely despise ndiswrapper, which is the only way to get her Broadcom based PC-Card wireless NIC to work properly. Ubuntu 6.06 sees the card and attempts to use its own driver and fails miserably when trying to connect to the network. Not only do I have to use a driver written for Windows instead, I also have to blacklist the default Ubuntu driver as well, and I have to redo it each time a new kernel is released. Word to the wise, use terminal when setting this up, not the GUI ndiswrapper utility.

On the flip side my notebook with an Intel wireless NIC connected to the network during installation with no additional work from me whatsoever. I've been using Ubuntu on my laptop as my primary OS since version 5.10 was released, and I have been very satisfied with my experience. But I have kept a Windows partition so that I can take advantage of HP's photo software, and also for those DirectX games that just won't run properly in Wine. Ultimately I still use both, but I use Ubuntu more.

Re:Maybe..

[John Courtland]

Kubuntu is much MUCH less poopy looking.

To contribute to the main topic: no. I use Kubuntu at both home and work. At home I have a AMD Barton 3000+ w/ 2GB RAM, at work I have an Intel Core Duo laptop. Both with NVIDIA cards, thank god. With Kubuntu 6.10, the laptop has what I would consider a serious showstopper bug in the wireless driver where it would halt the CPU during boot with an informative message: "BUG: Soft lockup detected on CPU#0" about 70% of the time. The fix was to install a patch, but I couldn't be bothered to deal with it so I just deleted the module from the /lib directory. If I were a total newbie, how the hell would I be able to fix that?

Also, installing updates to the proprietary NVIDIA kernel module in Kubuntu doesn't work quite right for me. I have to manually remove the module from /lib/modules/`uname -r`/volatile/ so that it doesn't try loading the wrong thing. Again, no newbie is going to be able to figure that out and they will capitulate and go back to windows. I realize this isn't necessarily Kunubtu's fault (although the NVIDIA installer complains that pkg-config isn't working right) but it needs to be addressed (I understand they're trying to deal with this topic in the next release, Feisty Fawn or whatever it's called).

I also managed to get one of my coworkers to move from Windows to Kubuntu, and let me just say that ATI can go to hell. That driver is so amazingly bad and complicated to install, that I will never recommend that someone install any distro of linux on a modern machine with an ATI card. Yeah the open source radeon driver 'works' but you don't get any acceleration. While that may not be a showstopper for many, it is impeding desktop acceptance.

Re:ATTENTION SLASHDOTTERS

[Andyham]

OK, I will give an answer to the question as best as I can. I suspect that all depends upon the longevity of the Ubuntu organization itself. And how it matures.

People have noted that it takes longer than the usual amount of time for Ubuntu to issue patches, that perhaps has to do with compatibility testing and dealing with their package management system.

I have installed Ubuntu for a few people and generally like what I see in terms of usability for your average computer user who really is not all that computer literate. However, there are a few issues that will occasionally come up and could stymie an unassisted home installer. In an enterprise setting with a full-time IT department that has thoroughly "vetted" the install, I suspect that this would be less of a problem than it would be for Joe home user. Updates and maintenence for an enterprise are generally a lot more tricky than for the home user, due to specific applications that are used in an enterprise setting, conflicts, etc.

Ubuntu as an organization has lots of valuable experience when it comes to home users. Little when it comes to enterprise situations. Despite there being some very good things I can say about Ubnutu, my best answer would be to go with the "devil you know", so to speak. Red Hat has tons of experience with enterprise support, and have no doubt already entountered (and solved) a lot of the problems that Ubuntu has yet to see.

So for the short term, unless you want to be part of a grand experiment that someday will probably work out well, it is best to stick with The Hat as they are pretty good at what they do (maybe that's why they are a tad expensive). And keep in mind that Ubuntu is now where Red Hat was (in terms of enterprise) in 1997 (or so).

Ubuntu may be cheaper right now (I really don't know), and you do get what you pay for in some situations. But saved money is no comfort when it don't work and you are the guy charged with making it work.

Is Ubuntu ready for the enterprise desktop?

[JanStedehouder]

My first response would be: definitely. But I would say that for all of the top mainstream Linux distributions. I have been using Ubuntu full time for the last four months and I use it for writing, designing and editing documents, answering and writing emails, accessing my websites and editing PHP files, play some music in the background, edit screenshots, burn my DVD's etc. etc. There are no issues, none whatsoever. In all honesty, Ubuntu Linux is very boring when you use it every day. No surprise glitches. Nothing.

I agree with the issue of updates, most notoriously FF2.0. Dapper Drake still doesn't have it and -as far as I understand- will not have it in the foreseeable future. That could be a security risk but since most companies still run IE6 even Dapper Drake with FF1.5.x should be a major improvement. I do understand that the choice for stability comes at a price. If you want to stay current with all innovation (and there are major innovations under way in Linux) Dapper Drake is not the distribution to use (nor is Debian for that matter, but only few complain about that).

Dapper Drake is a stable, secure and solid desktop distribution perfectly suitable for common office tasks. Will it still be around in five years time? That will depend on it's actual use. If the home endusers continue to follow the upgrade trail and move away from Dapper Drake and the number of companies rolling out Dapper is minimal, I can see the LTS version being dropped prematurely and replaced by another stable version. Canonical is a business like many others: young, but with a lot of traction. We should give it the benefit of the doubt and start pushing adoption of Ubuntu in our workplaces.

Watch me get modded as a troll

[synthespian]

I think it's time people just abandon such high hopes with this Debian-derived Linux. We have read recently how Debian developers were stalling once again...And Ubuntu depends on Debian. Good luck with that.

Besides, Linux distros, as a whole, are a sort of a mess. If you ever had to buy proprietary software for Linux, you know what I'm talking about - unreliable. You better pray that on your next upgrade your expensive software will work. There are too many differences between distros for ISVs to keep up...

Right now, it seems the best choice for an open source desktop would be PC-BSD, with its install as easy as a Windows or a Mac OS install. PC-BSD, fortunately, is based on FreeBSD and is not a fork or a distro. Just a solution on top of FreeBSD. BSD developers work on the system as a whole. Linux is made of bits and pieces. Some say that it's what makes it evolve faster. I'm not so sure. Of course, we have to keep in mind what firms like IBM invest in Linux development...Apparently, the fallacy that GPL protects your business investment seems to hinder BSD devlopment (20th-century limited material resources type of thinking...)

I've used Debian for over 5 years. I tried Ubuntu. Ubuntu has has too many problems for my taste, like problems in upgrading, documentation problems, etc. I thought the whole Ubuntu experience was disorganized, in fact, and I thought PHP web forums for support was the most pathetic you could get (hey, NNTP is nice!). SuSE and RedHat have per seat licenses, so where do you go for a decent Linux? We're not in 1996 anymore, we expect shit to work.

The whole typical Linux experience that made me switch to OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Mac OS. I am not going back to that ever...

My experience: It's the "little" things ...

[isolationism]

I've installed and configured a couple Ubuntu systems now; one with the 64-bit Ubuntu and another with 32-bit Kubuntu, both Dapper (although the former I -- painfully -- upgraded to Edgy, at which point the computer started crashing often, which is why I switched back to Gentoo on my desktop -- Kubuntu is a temporary desktop for my dad while I do some maintenance on his PC).

A few of my personal experiences with running Ubuntu:

• Installation, I grant you, is pretty easy. On modern hardware, almost all of my devices installed and worked just fine with no screwing around. The video driver was an exception; it worked, but the driver was generic VESA (when I had an integrated nVidia chip on an mATX motherboard). Not a deal-breaker, although the performance sucked until this was resolved.
• Fonts are still a mess, not least of all because of Apple's patent on freetype's Byte Code Interpreter. I recently wrote a little article on my blog about how to improve font rendering in Linux [isolationism.com], but this is far from a perfect solution--and it still involves a lot of fiddling around to get right. They should just render beautifully out-of-the-box given how particular Shuttleworth is about appearances.
• Application choice. I understand there is the question about support, but shouldn't I be able to readily install what I want without having to jump through so many hoops? Users are forever editing their sources.list file to include repositories that contain the package they want, then you have to use Adept or Synaptic (no not that Adept/Synaptic, that one, which is much more cluttered and difficult to read/use). I'm not talking about the latest and greatest version of Beryl, either -- just stuff like browsers, mail clients or office utilities that didn't make Ubuntu/Kubuntu's "short-list".
• There's always another package to solve functionality problems. For example, I had to install some user-created deb package just to get !@!&* FLAC working in Amarok. The same got replaced as soon as Ubuntu updated the library with something slightly newer--which of course had the FLAC functionality disabled again. Excuse my ignorance, but why the hell wouldn't FLAC support be included considering it's relatively commonly-used, compatibly licenced format? Why am I installing a user-compiled libraries to get this basic functionality so I can do "everyday user" stuff in Linux, like listening to music?
• Suspend/Sleep/Hibernation. I know this still isn't well-supported under Linux, but again I would expect Ubuntu to do a better job. I've seen articles out there blaming Microsoft for wasting millions of dollars worth of the world's power because of their operating system's power management policy--but really, that's the user's fault for not employing the clearly visible feature, not the operating system's: At least sleep/suspend/hibernate works well on modern hardware under Windows. I can't say the same for Ubuntu: even on brand new hardware I can't get it to work, no matter how much time I spend tinkering with installing and configuring various packages. I confess, none of this was on a laptop (the primary support target for this functionality), but does that mean it shouldn't "just work" anyway? It's the desktops that are wasting >100W of power by being on all the time, not the laptops that draw perhaps 20W during heavy loads when plugged in.
• Remember that time a couple months ago when Canonical pushed out a package that prevented X from loading properly? I do. A lot of Ubuntu users who had never seen the console (and never want to) filled their pants that day. I cringed when it happened; it wouldn't have bothered me much (inconvenienced, perhaps) but I doubt the same could be said for most of Ubuntu's target audience.
• And then, there is the speed. I know performance isn't everything, but Ubuntu is almost painfully/embarassingly slow. I have only limited experience with Linux desktops; I've used Ub

Re:ummm...

[logicassasin]

"There are just as many Slashdot users out there saying "Linux users need to realize that if they want their OS to survive blah blah blah" like you. Could you muster up an original thought?"

it's been done over and over. Here's a few of my own thoughts on the subject: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93340&cid= 8018882 [slashdot.org]

Linux still needs commercial apps. Linux still needs to be made easier for the newbie. Linux still needs people like you to get off their high horse.

If linux is ready for YOUR desktop, fine, you're not asking much of it. I, on the other hand, need more than Linux currently offers. I CAN do a great deal of my work under Linux (FPGA development, Java and C dev, word processing, anything server related, email, web browsing, music/video playback), but not all of it. There's still no ProTools or Cubase for Linux (No, Rosegarden and Ardour don't cut it), still no FL Studio, Rebirth, Reason, or Serato Scratch and support for any Digidesign hardware will likely never materialize. While my console emulators usually have Linux versions, the vast majority of my commercial games don't (ID games are the notable exception). I still can't work with my Flash projects under Linux. The Gimp is nice and all, but I'm far faster (and therefore more productive) in PhotoShop.

Linux is coming along. It'll be there one day.

Re:These aren't the big issues at all

[aaronl]

So what does that make you? Hint: it might be a socially inept Windows zealot that doesn't know how the platform works. Cascade/tile windows only does that one time. It does *NOT* auto-tile or auto-cascade windows, as I have to do it every time I open a new window.