It has been a few weeks now since I first installed my ubuntu system and have had dual boot with Windows Xp.Since the start Ubuntu has been quite impressive.Right from shipping absolutely free Cd rom to 15 minute installation , support and the system has been amazing.However the so called “eye candy” is not yet really ready for wide usage and needs a lot of makeover before a normal guy would undoubtedly choose Ubuntu /Linux over Windows.
Here is a list of few reasons why I would prefer Windows over Ubuntu.
1) No Support for Games
Like the absolute necessities of life – Food , water , clothing ,shelter and air – gaming is the dire need of every nerd sitting in front of his computer on a saturday morning.Considering that Ubuntu has almost nil support for gaming it takes all the charm away.Dont get me wrong here but the inability to play Cs / GTA and the likes is good for people who have sickness of stocks or are more into reading the newsline at times more than they blink their eyes.
2) Unease of Installation
Windows designed the simple interface of clicking on an exe and installing anything you want with the possibility of customizing the options along the way.You might have to click the “Next” button 10 times and reboot at the end of installation but going to a command line and then searching the forums(For newbies) for a command to get the software is a bit old school.In addition to that getting to know to edit your fstab files, and other settings file is also not easy.
—I installed ubuntu and played with it for a week without sound. I literally did everything that the support on the forums said or suggestions that other people had but could not come up with a solution.I spent nearly a week trying to fix the sound but could not get it to work.In the end I found out that all I had to do was to go to command line and type Alsa mixer and manually adjust the sound settings.—–
3) Some Mods are lift from the windows.
Some short cut keys are directly lifted from the way the Windows behaves. Ubuntu looks at the adaptibility
of people and wants to keep the things similiar to the way the people want them.But hey – aren’t we creating something better and fresh. What I mean is for an example ” pressing alt+tab” is the same as windows – “desktop show” icon , Trash / recycle bin and so on and so forth.
Maybe you could come up with something innovative like Recycle Planet – or something even better. Some features are a direct copy from windows but if Linux is innovation then we expect better !
4) Linux treats everything on your system as a file.
Yes.Everything on your linux system is a file.Right from a small pic to a network Socket. This makes it so easy to delete everything on the system (Whole system) while running the system. We have a common PC in our house which everyone shares and everyone knows the password to. I am sure if users are sharing a computer and know the password to the account it is not difficult to delete everything. I mean this being its biggest advantage is also its biggest disadvantage.
In addition to this screen resolutions issues, Nvidia graphics card drivers, settings manager , running programs not developed in windows is wide.Pidgin as a messenger is good but not as good as using MSN or Yahoo themselves. Webcam support and a lot of other problems make ubuntu usable but not the first choice.
#1 by TenSIgh on Tuesday, 5. August 2008
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Nice post. I have had similar experiences. Ubuntu is great but it does require lots of time and effort. Windows installers make things a lot easier when installing hardware drivers. I still like Linux but there are things on Windows that are just easier.
#2 by Vincent on Wednesday, 6. August 2008
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While you’re right that games mostly don’t support Ubuntu, there’s a few oddities in your post. When something’s available under Applications->Add/Remove…, installation is far and far easier than it is on Windows. True, sometimes an application is not, and that sucks, but that falls under “software availability” (just like games not being available) and has nothing to do with ease of installation.
The problem with alsa mixer is not a problem with Ubuntu but with the people. You probably can also do it graphically (I don’t use Ubuntu myself) but tutorials on the internet mostly tell you to use commands. Still, it’s a problem indeed.
I don’t see why you’d want Ubuntu to use other shortcut keys though. Being able to use Ctrl+C to copy stuff really isn’t a showstopper for me, it just makes it easier. Sure, there might be some more innovation, but there also already is a lot of innovation and it’s certainly not the same as Windows. And changing shortcut keys is very odd anyway.
Also, why would you delete files you don’t know? You can delete essential files on Windows too. On Ubuntu, though, you get a warning when entering your password that you get to the area where you *can* damage stuff. That should be enough to prevent you from deleting stuff you don’t know.