while at my sister's place a couple weeks back my brother-in-law, mark, asked about linux and if we could install it on his system. at first i thought, "oh man. i'm supposed to be here enjoying myself, i don't know if i want to have to support someone through the process of switching to linux ...." and then i caught myself. i mean, this is 2007 not 1997. if we can't make it now, when can we?
so we downloaded a linux distro (kubuntu), threw another hard drive in his computer and installed it. well, actually, he installed it. then he configured printing, networking and started exploring all the software that was right there. within days he had the family accounts in kmymoney, was playing web games, sharing drives and much more ...
the only thing he needed help from me for was getting multimedia (read: proprietary codec crap) to work (we really, really, really need a solution for the codecs problem; and it needs to be gratis for users and integrated into the distro), to set up gpg-agent so he could cache his password (he'd never used gpg before but discovered it in kmail and decided he wanted that =) and to share his printer over the network with windows machines.
except for the multimedia issue, these aren't overly trivial tasks on any operating system and to be honest, *buntu doesn't make printer management as easy as it can be.
he fell in love with the system. for one, unlike xp which he claimed took a coffee break to boot up, he was at his kde desktop in less than a minute. for another, there was all that great software. and he was doing everything he was doing on windows (he couldn't get print sharing to work reliably there either, btw =).
i saw him installing the system updates every day they were available and he really dug the idea that there was all this really great software to use at his disposal. he ended up spending more than a couple nights up late playing with things.
but best of all: he didn't ask me how to do this-or-that trivial thing. he just point-and-clicked his way around to his satisfaction. i overheard him a couple times telling some of his friends and workmates who came by the house about how cool this new operating system was. =)
it isn't 1997 anymore, indeed.
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12 comments:
Well he IS a sonar tech aboard a Trident Submarine...THAT Might help! hehehe
Jaye
if you would have given him UBUNTU and not KUBUNTU, the restrcted drivers manager would have popped up and it would have been very easy for him to get the drivers.
> if you would have given him UBUNTU and
> not KUBUNTU
indeed, one more reason i'm growing less enchanted with *buntu these days. why should i continue to use and support something that doesn't support my choices?
it was once said that kubuntu would not be relegated to the sidelines by leaders within ubuntu and canonical. so far, while producing a rather nice system, those promises have not been followed through on.
a quandry to work through.
If opensuse continues as it does within the current dev-cycle there will be a one CD install for KDE that sets up all online repos automatically as well. Not for codecs though, but KDE is certainly better integrated into the distro then with (k)ubuntu.
wow, nice work aseigo!
linux/kde ftw!
In Kubuntu Gutsy, you will have new kubuntu-restricted-extras package that will install all must-have codes stuff.
Well, as someone said...the ordinary Gnome edition takes care of the drivers issue. Not an ideal situation if you want KDE though. I believe it is being fixed for Gutsy though. I hope the rest of the shortcomings in Kubuntu as compared to Ubuntu are fixed too, but we'll see.
For now, if someone want a *ubuntu based distro with KDE without that extra hassle, I would suggest the Mint derivative. There it works out-of-the-box.
Hello Aaron, the multimedia issue is indeed one that has to be fixed soon.
Actually, some time ago, I have talked to Kaffeine developers about Kaffeine allowing to download restricted video codecs on-demand. Aside from the fact that this problem is a "hot potato" one (both upstream and downstream pointing at each other), the Kaffeine devs acknowledged that it could be a useful feature.
But of course not for KDE3, because all upstream devs are concentrating on KDE4 for some time now.
Although some people may say otherwise, Kubuntu is a community, volunteer project, having only a bare minimum of resources Ubuntu (GNOME) has. So (people) please, don't blame the Kubuntu devs and maintainers for Kubuntu not being equal.
The Kaffeine multimedia feature is just an example of the "new KDE release deadlock". The downstream developers kind of have to deal with what is "here and now" (KDE3), but (being volunteers mainly) they refuse to code something that will be thrown away once KDE4 is out.
Don't get me wrong, the "deadlock" is not really a bad thing. only the result of the KDE release cycle. Compare it with the GNOME one or the Linux kernel one. ( There have been countless arguments about this and I really do not want to start one. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. )
The solution is obvious: upstream works as hard as possible to make KDE4 rock, and downstream tries to implement all those amazing ideas for the first KDE4 release. Everyone wins! Well, users have to wait a bit. So please, be patient. Thanks.
Oh, and we implemented a Restricted Manager frontend for the next release of Kubuntu. It's written in python-kde3, but I promise I'll do a pykde4 version as soon as possible.
Printing is worse in Kubuntu mostly because it has had no love in KDE, whereas there have been some very interesting development works in Gnome. For gutsy+1 I hope to look at integrating some of the gnome printer auto-detection and setup backends into KDE.
Kubuntu with KDE 4 will kick ass!
Very nice!
I switched 2 co-workers of my wife to Linux in the last weeks. Their computer were unusable because of spyware.
I realized that non-geeks are a lot easier to switch, they have no complain at all about the UI.
I must say that I loaded them on Ubuntu because Kubuntu misses a few things, at least in Feisty...
hey, wasn't Kubuntu the FIRST with the automatic downloading of proprietary codecs? I do remeber Amarok having that years ago...
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