aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Ubuntu Linux v Windows Vista

I’m a Linux dilettante; the only flavor I know is Ubuntu. If not before, the day I lose my Mac will be the day I become a maven. In the meantime I’ve got a couple Ubuntu projects going to move me in that direction.

So I was interested to see the Ubuntu Linux Vs. Windows Vista: The Battle For Your Desktop in-depth comparison piece from Information Week:

The prevailing wisdom about Linux on the desktop runs something like this: “I’ll believe Linux is ready for the desktop as soon as you can give me a Linux distribution that even my grandmother can run.”

For some time, the folks at Ubuntu have been trying their best to make Granny—and most everyone else—happy. They’ve attempted to build a Linux distribution that’s easy to install, use, configure, and maintain—one that’s at least as easy as Windows, and whenever possible, even easier. As a result, Ubuntu is one of the Linux distributions that has been most directly touted as an alternative to Windows.

From the conclusion:

[T]here’s at least as much about Ubuntu that I find disheartening or frustrating. There are still too many places where you have to drop to a command line and type in a fairly unintuitive set of commands to get something done, or edit a config file, or—worst of all—download and compile source code. For a beginner, this last is the kiss of death, because if compiling code fails, a beginner will almost certainly have no idea what to do next.

To be scrupulously fair, the situation isn’t always much better in Windows: Most people find the idea of spelunking the Registry to be about as unappealing—although the Registry does enforce at least some degree of consistency in the way configuration data is stored.

RELATED: MP3 Open Business Interview with Mark Shuttleworth: The Business Ecology of Ubuntu.