Comments on "Is there life after Windows?"

Courtesy of Independent.co.UK

I am now a Linux user. Not only am i a user but I'm also using the same distro mentioned in this article. Yes my version is 8.04 vs 8.10 but there isn't all THAT much difference between them.

I thoroughly enjoyed the article and the feedback comments at the bottom really make it complete. That fact that they bothered to identify what most average users use their computer for (browsing, IM, Office, and music) was a relief. For years i have argued that most of the garbage on a standard PC isn't needed by home users. At best, they need a thin client and they'd never notice the difference. Finally an article has addressed what i've felt has been obvious for a long time. One of the reasons for making the switch for myself was specifically because the bulk of what i do daily can be done on any platform.

When reading the feedback of the 4 testers I found myself having flashbacks. Every lesson learned over the years of dabbling came flooding back to me in an instant as i read the words of the reviewers.

My first reaction to this was that none of the 4 testers had the same problem. As maddening as this can be, i think it's a sign that things have really come a long way. Everyone views their computer in a different way. For some people it's a media center where they have their music collection that gets them through the day. Some people base it's performance solely on how Office behaves. Others use it excusively for browsing and checking sports scores. This is what it comes down to. Developers shouldn't tell people how to use their machines. People have to tell developers how they use it and developers should react accordingly.

The feedback comments seem to really focus in on the tester named Tony Messenger. He tried to zero in on codecs being the issue which seemed to me to be his way of seperating himself from the rest of the pack. The reality is, this was a vanilla install and therefore didn't have any mp3/flash/adobe plugins enabled because of EULA's that need to be agreed upon and other fun stuff. If this had been a virgin install of Windoze, he would have had the same problems. Perhapse it's been too long since he's had a clean install or maybe he's never even used a clean install before.

Someone like Mr Messenger needs to heed the advice of Yoda and "unlearn what you have learned". The harsh reality is that this is a fairly typical response for someone who has used Windoze exclusively. It's easy for commenters to sit back and say "all you need to do is enable this via add/remove and it'll grab the packages for you and do the work". I would laugh if someone had the same problem if it was their first time on a Windoze machine. "Didn't you know you're supposed to install flash so you can view youtube? Duh!" It was only after reading the simple documentation about mp3's + linux that i understood why it's like that out of the box. Just because it's logical doesn't mean it's common sense!

Finally, the tester named Androulla Polydorou hit the nail on the head with their comment: "I had a few problems at first, such as finding the right icon to turn up the volume. I think perhaps I'm so used to Windows that I'm not used to searching around for icons." There's a glimmer of hope yet! Rather than attacking Mr Messenger about his inablility to deal with the "codecs" issue I'd hoped that the feedback comments would have zeroed in on this instead. Here was someone who was able to acknowledge their own personal bias based on history and they seem acutely aware of how it's influencing their testing experience. Whether you're using a Mac, PC, or *nix, you should be aware of what you're used to seeing. The benchmark has already been set.

Do I think Ubuntu/linux is ready for the people en masse as an alternative? No. There are still dependencies and "quirks" which need to be resolved. People will not be willing to make the jump until they know they can do everything they're used to doing on their old PC. They're willing to roll the dice and deal with their AV's and malware if it means their machine runs the way they're used to. Installing windoze apps under Wine can still be a nightmare.

In the end, people don't like change. When WinXP launched, the die hards said they were sticking with 98 or 2k forever. Where are they now? Running XP. Vista/7 are drastically different from XP and once again users will not have a choice. In 2 years there will be less grumbling because users will be acclimated to the new environments and resistant to the newest release. Facebook recently changed their layout again. Everyone wants it to revert back to the old way. Nevermind the fact that when the "old" version launched 6 months ago, people grumbled and wanted it to go back to the version before that. The changes held and there was no mass exodus. The world did not stop spinning.

I would like to say that i really liked this article. It never announced a verdict one way or another. It presented the facts and left everything open ended. My only grumble that i have is that they should have given users vanilla installs of a Windoze OS on identical hardware for a side by side comparrison. Hindsite is 20/20 and this doesn't keep me from enjoying what i read. I look forward to reading further articles on this topic as time goes by.