New article in the Economist criticizing Linux usability

[Thomas Milne]

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 11:38 PM, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 10:43 PM,  <sciguy-Ja3L+HSX0kI at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
>> But after a
>> while, and on this point I agree with the writer, creators of OS'es
>> like Ubuntu became over-zealous and broke a lot of things. But his
>> problem is that he is using this idea to whitewash all other Linux
>> distros, which is a bit unfair.
>
> Well, he's putting together a story, optimizing its presentation so as
> to ensure maximum publication-worthiness, in the "maximizing
> controversy" sense, so it's pretty predictable that there will be a
> maximum of luridity.

100% absolutely correct. There is nothing in that article that isn't a
complete waste of effort to read. It might as well be an advertisement
for soap.

In general, the claim that adoption of Linux has _anything_ to do with
the technical quality of the OS is utter nonsense. It is nothing to do
with this or that package management scheme or number of packages, it
is a simple matter of politics and economics. Think about it in
reverse. Is Microsoft on top because it has some technical advantage?
Clearly, no. It has an effective salesman with the right political
connections.

> Historically, it hasn't just been Ubuntu that has gotten thus
> "over-zealous."  Fedora has had its moments, and going back as far as
> when Red Hat 7.3 was aggressive about drawing in things I can barely
> remember anymore, but broke a lot of things on people.
>
> There's eminently good reason to *want* a distribution to be
> aggressive about drawing stuff in.  Ubuntu has been using this with
> regards to supporting new devices ASAP, and that's rather important if
> people are trying to install it on a recent laptop.
>
> In contrast, Debian's relative conservatism can lead to people having
> to go searching for "bleeding edge" bits in order to support whatever
> new stuff is on their motherboard that isn't in a stable kernel.  I
> ran into that very problem when I installed Debian on my present
> desktop machine at the office - I *needed* to pull a wildly newer
> kernel than was in Stable to support the NIC that was Dell's flavour
> of the week.  I was able to work it out, but not everyone can, and
> some might use such challenges to justify arguing that Debian's old
> and broken.

Why you would run Stable on an office desktop, I'm not sure. A lot of
people misunderstand Debian's naming scheme, which is not surprising.

We get used to things being a certain way, so when we use a new tool
and it uses different procedures and processes we react as if it is
broken. Debian has a very clear and logical package management system
which will allow people to accomplish almost anything they wish on any
hardware with zero headaches. The fact that someone didn't know how
that works is not the fault of Debian.

> I'm suspicious that Ubuntu may have gotten so aggressive with stuff
> like Unity that it may well hurt them.
>
> There's a lot of stuff "up", between Unity, Wayland, new init
> alternatives, and it's debatable whether:
> - Being an old stick-in-the-mud risks being left behind.  And a LOT of
> people left Slackware over such.
> - Adopters of new things are lemmings leaping towards the edges of cliffs.
>
> Precedent exists, in both directions.

-- 
Thomas Milne
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