Comments on: Ubuntu desktop apparently scares Microsoft

Redmond wants to find someone to help it combat open-source competitors on the desktop--and Ubuntu is the likeliest target for a range of reasons.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Nothing is keeping anyone with a PC from dual-booting Linux/Windows. I think in the future , MSFT will dump Windows and put out a consumer-friendly , supported , standardized version of Linux.
That is why Windows dominates. Support , standardized interface , easy to use , best driver/software support. Same could be accomplished with Linux as the Kernel.

[tm_anon]

I like the idea of your comment but, judging from what I've seen and read, Linux currently has better driver support for anything below the absolute bleeding edge new pieces of hardware. The ease of use was such that, once I tried it, I haven't looked back nor have I had any problems adapting to it. Support is incredible from the community (with MS I spoke with a man in India who simply told me to click here, download this, run this, wait).

MS can't switch to a Linux kernel for the same reason it's having such a hard time adding in UAC and trying to run semi-limited user accounts. Windows was built in such a way as to leave itself wide open at all times and applications were written with this in mind.

A complete rewrite of Windows would put it on too level of a playing field. We'd all see just how poorly it's really set up. Why run Windows with a Linux kernel if MS is simply going to lock you in? Just run Linux.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Get an Asus MOBO with Express Gate. It gives you a taste of Linux and shows you it is fast , stable , and has a small footprint. Linux is just another OS that gets stuff done , and works very well. Nothing to be afraid of at all. Plus that lil penguin (Tux) is so cute.

[tm_anon]

Could also just download a LiveCD or order one from Ubuntu like I did. Plus it's a great way to know that your hardware works with Linux.

[genetrumbo]

I once read that 85% of the babies born on the planet live in conditions of near hopeless poverty(ie, the third world). This statistic has profound implications for Microsoft. One of the few technologies that can help make a better future for humanity is free or cheap access to information and communication. That would be some kind of Linux netbook with all kinds of useful free software and free downloaded how-to books from a government funded satellite delivered internet. Ubuntu has the potential of eliminating the fragmentation of Linux choices.
A man named Lester Dyson wrote a book that I would like to read someday. It is called "The Sun, the Internet and the Genome. It is about 3 emerging technologies that could end extreme poverty for everyone on the planet. I just mentioned one of those technologies. The others would be the hope of electrification of mud huts with cheap and efficient solar panels, and improved plants and animals for feeding many of the almost 7 billion people on the planet.
I have been in Africa, Asia and Central America. Poverty is the awful experience of most people on the planet. It is in the interest of the more secure people of the world to help the poorest with access to the tools that will allow them to create better futures for themselves. Otherwise, many more of them will find their way into the US and Europe.
Microsoft has thousands of brilliant people working for it. I don't worry for their abilities to make a living. Microsoft is going to lose out, because a more attractive alternative is emerging. Cost matters.

[pmchefalo]

Hey, let's give everyone a Linux laptop at birth! One laptop per child. We could call the program for short OLPC.

[Ted Miller]

A chance to bash my favorite company and get paid for it. A chance to get them back on their feet with a real product? I'll take the job!!!! and I'll do it for cheap!

[DragonWizard]

I used to look here for good info but now days all you read are people trying to look bright by making others look ignorant.. What a bunch of negative backstabbing junk... You let folks give an opinion and all they do is talk about how stupid the next guy is.. Oh well.... the heck with it... none of you have anything IMPORTANT to say just " you Mac lovin' jack-o- rabbit monkey beeper... You PC slap happy dunk-o- phile.. what you fail to realize is that I'll always know more about the whole world so you all should just tell me how smart I am..".. what gigo self absorbed nonsense... get a life fella's...

[dewey711]

talking about microsoft, i would not go back to microsoft after using ubuntu linux.linux is the best os and the most secure.

[i_made_this]

Xandros has been on the merger / acquisition trail heavily for the past couple years. Last year they bought the Linux distro Linspire and formed a strategic partnership with MSFT similar to the one Novell's got. Problem with all of this is that the big OEM's who've been putting Linux Inside stick their own proprietary tag on the distro, just like GOOG has indicated will do when their desktop / laptop Linux O/S is ready - in a nutshell, what we've seen in so many words is Apple revisited. And that won't do.

Why is MSFT so concerned about Canonical? Because, amongst other things, Mark's got serious funding behind him. I think it's probable that MSFT's rightly petrified of a poor man's version of Apple and OS X - Mark putting out his own Ubuntu-branded boxes could actually make sense if he sold or merged Canonical with some chip-maker that gave him the needed hardware.

How upset would HP, Dell or Acer be with a combined AMD/Canonical? Upset enough to tie themselves to a sole CPU maker, as Apple has done?

[jasonofcompsci]

whao-who. I love the sound of no more sacred profit cows. This is awesome. This just proves that Ubuntu and Linux are good causes. Well except for developing for free. That can suck. But if someone wants to develop for free I think we all do that a little as a hobby. The key is to make sure it gets archived and not wasted. Like in the Debian repositories. Still attaching Microsoft is not as great a mission as we sometimes think it is. The real devil is Apple. They lock there customers into a market so they get a virtual monopoly and can price things how ever they want no matter how much other systems can offer the same capability. They're the corporate swine manipulators. For the most part Microsoft just sells a product or two for a price. Nothing wrong with that. It's called a business.

[atish505]

We swicthed form Microsoft XP to Ubuntu Linux last year and ported 120 desktops and 60+ laptops. All of them had some version of Windows on it and they count as Windows machines. But they are not being used for that purpose.

Second, Microsoft counts every CD shipped to OEM, disti and retail channels as Windows License when in fatc it may never be used. SO the figures for Microsoft are way over blown. Microsoft's desktop is good for only 1 thing: QA testing Anti Virus and Anti Spyware/malware software.

[wolivere]

So its really good eh? So say you have a laptop "widescreen" or a "Widescreen" Desktop LCD, one that it fails to probe, and does not provide you a nice resolution. Seams the most common problem is 1680 * 1050.

Explain in simple steps, and no xorg reconfiguration does not work, it needs to hold the resolution through a reboot. It needs to maintain the resolution, when and if the video driver updates.

But the guide needs to be simple so if you make the guide with a lot of command line stuff, and after the second line tell people to shut down GDM, make sure to explain to them to print out these instructions, so they don't sit there looking at a login prompt.

If you recommend xrandr and the mode is not there, explain simple how to add the mode. And no the Wiki fails at this.

I bring this up, since I would say 50% of the call's I get from people with borked Ubuntu installs come from its inability to properly detected monitors. That and putting Viewsonic and Dell monitors into RMA mode by blowing away the EDID or putting the monitor into perpetual sleep mode.

[tm_anon]

What percentage of the calls from Windows users are about removing viruses, malware, spyware, fixing the registry, finding and installing the correct drivers or "basic" computer maintenance dealing with the software that a Linux user never has to worry about? I'm actually getting higher resolution with ubuntu than I did with XP, no hardware change.

I haven't touched the xorg file nor would I know where to find it. I haven't read the wiki because I didn't need it.

While I'm not saying these issues don't arise, try comparing them with the Windows complaints you get. It's not a one-sided coin here. Neither OS is perfect, but with Ubuntu able to run on older hardware on up to fairly heavy duty stuff, I'd side with the one that's free.

[HeavyJim]

I've installed ubuntu 3 times, the rest of the family just hated it. It was alright, to me, but in the end it was, why? windows does all I need.

[tm_anon]

Next time try installing it on a seperate partition. You get Ubuntu and they get Windows. When Windows ends up with viruses or malware or the registry needs cleaning or it just needs defragmenting so bad it makes the computer feel 5 years older than it is, refuse to fix it for them. They'll either learn how to do it themselves or they'll give Ubuntu a shot since it'll still be running like the first time.

[pmchefalo]

This says it all for ubuntu. What a paltry list of compatible servers. Just a joke, after all the claims of all the Linux blowhards.

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/validatedhardware

[inachu]

Would be nice to voice control my desktop. No I am not talking about getting rid of the keyboard but instead activate skins with your voice. So while using windows I say, "Linux" now Windows looks like Linux. Or I say, "work" and now the desktop is suitable for a work environment. The only way I can do this with Linux or Windows is to have several accounts and They are not used for several people to log into my pc but each account is a function on what I would like to do on my pc so that I retain optimum focus on my pc doing my work within a work environment without seeing tempting gaming icons sitting about on my desktop.

[kwhsy82]

A company of 100K people posts a job and they are "scared"? Apparently a pre-existing job? Good grief, slow news day.

[surfinmonkey]

I install Ubuntu on every used windows machine that I find that can handle the requirements and works well.I usually reformat the whole harddrive and use all of it for Ubuntu if a windows machine is messed up from viruses and spyware and doesn't have a restore CD or Full windows Install CD.
Why go out and pay microsoft for an OS when I can resell these PC's with Ubuntu on them and actually make a profit.It's alot better than stripping out the parts and recycling or dumping them at landfills.
I only make computers Dual Boot and have Windows XP and Unbuntu on them if windows is not trashed or I have a CD to reinstall it that came with the PC.
Those PC's that used to have Windows on them are now either running Ubuntu alone or they have Ubuntu and Windows on them. :)
How can Microsoft Calculate that?
Hmm.. A PC that is running windows but also Ubuntu .
I do have a problem with Ubuntu,and that is with it not having the best drivers for ATI Video Cards which is actually ATI's / AMD's fault. The drivers are getting better but a regular person can't manually install the drivers that you can download from ATI's site. I don't like the photo editing programs as much as I like the ones I use in Windows XP also.
I tested Vista Beta for months when that came out,it seemed nice to look at but I didn't find anything in it that said to me,I need this and i can spend over $100 updating my windows XP machine.There wasn't enough added functionality to it and it slowed my machine down.Why would i pay to make my computer slower with SOFTWARE? haha .Has anyone ever paid money to upgrade a computer with an older ,slower video card?anyway.. lol
I have been testing Windows 7 and it works ok on newer machines,but any with older video cards or old audio cards can forget about windows 7.They can't make drivers for obsolete and OEM cards.If your hardware was hard to find updated drivers for using windows XP, you probably will never find good ones that work with Vista or Windows 7 either. Ubuntu on the other hand,will probably work with your outdated hardware.

[Voice_Of_Logic]

Scares me too. I would never use any open-source crap.

[tm_anon]

When I see you in the bread line, I'll make sure you go first. With that attitude you'll be broke a lot faster than me.

[drmguy]

It seems misguided to compare Windows 7/Windows Vista to Ubuntu without noting the malicious features they have. GNU/Linux distros like Ubuntu are mostly made up of free software which do not have these malicious features. There are even free distros like gNewSense and BLAG, which while not popular, do serve as a useful reference point nonetheless.

[iindii]

Hello, this article including the responses took about an hour to read carefully.
I can see that we have some trolling with some posts, however the majority of the concerns and posts are great, yet some things still do not hit the nail on the head.

I want to add some pros and cons.

From a small business perspective, I have found my clients do not like linux if it doesn't run Quickbooks or Myob properly. The Accountant and the Boss both freak out and require training.

It has become more cost effective to install a MacBook with Virtual Box or Vmware Fusion and XP.
They surf and email plus manage media in the mac environment and when the accountant visits, they pop open a windows environment. I know there are Myob versions for mac, but its reduces training and winfections, once its secured with third party apps.

The transition for the client has been a lot less freaky then Ubuntu.
Only one client has taken a ubuntu installation, but had the nerve for trying things out.

From a corporate perspective, most IT Admins are stedfast and hold onto the job they have without rocking the boat.
They themselves do not want extra workloads and see linux for the secretary who always stuffs up her browser or email as another headache, however it really wouldnt be that way if you think about it.

From an artistic perspective, Apple has my choice of system.
2D/3D/ Video/Audio and Multimedia outshines the lot, however yes its a little more expensive, yet one video job pays for itself twice over so its relative.

No Sorry The Gimp and or Sketchup and Inkscape cannot be a substitute for printed graphic design. It lacks true CMYK components, however it is good for RGB monitor work. No Sorry Blender is great but Maya and Zbrush win my heart.
No Sorry Final Cut Pro earned me $4000 this fortnight over Avids painful interaction with Mojo. Sorry about that Virtual dub and others you just do not cut it for me.

From a coding perspective, Windows, Apple and Linux interests me, however I really enjoy the Linux and OSX side of things here. I guess I am a Unix kid through and through in my terminal ways, so Linux wasnt a hard step to make.

Ruby is my latest interest language along with Unity3d. They are both great languages.

From a gaming perspective Windows XP is about all I am using it for, I also keep it around for teaching purposes and for guiding users around the OS via the phone if a client requires it.

However gaming is now more centralized to my lounge room, instead of myself being abused by teenagers who call everyone nubcakes in online gaming and cheat to high hell.

Console and Computer are connected for lounge room action which changed the gaming around my house anyway to a more social experience, then mouse twitching death matches in FPS sweat pools.

From a web-server perspective I love Free BSD. All my clients get one if I can push them that way, they usually have no idea regardless. This is where they are generating money, online sales, with unix. Sure the sales team are doing there job, but the salary kills the small business unless the sales person is pulling the weight. Usually the online stuff serves a much better business model.

I have tried about 16 different distros over my Linux History. I think Ubuntu/ Fedora/ Debian and maybe Gentoo are my favorite experiences. I had installed Xandros 3.0 years ago as well as Mach on Os9, that was really nice. I had also installed Mklinux on an old PPC 80mhz many moons ago.

Ubuntu is a really nice alternative for cash strapped business models for sure.

To summarize I am using all three on a mac book pro in todays climate, all hand in hand, all for different components, gaining the best of all three worlds, while still making sure they are profitable to my core business. There are people who do art and can code as well as use all three at the same time without much fuss, and still turn a profit. I have a studio with many different computers that stretch back to my beloved Texas Instruments Ti - 99a ;) I still have a mandrake 5 and a redhat 5 disc in my case for shiggles as well ;)

Now for my lame attempt at humour.
I guess I should also point out after reading "Voice of Logics" reply and his alternative replies to other threads, that his username is some form of oxymoron minus the oxy :)