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This article is strange… The author uses “being able to open Microsoft Office documents” as a common example of what an OS that claims to be easy to use should be able to do. Then says…
When people download Ubuntu 23.04 they get an OS that can do everything Windows 95 did - with 23.10 they don’t
No default installation of Microsoft Windows EVER opened Microsoft Office documents. If this was a simple oversight in the write-up it’d be fine, but the point is hammered over and over again.
I don’t have an opinion about Ubuntu including or not including more software in the default installation (my guess is it became too big to fit on a DVD?) but this article failed to make it’s point to me by making a comparison to Windows that isn’t true.
Also…
the world’s most popular desktop Linux operating system (that’s Ubuntu, for those of you playing dumb)
Is this supposed to be a cocky joke? I can’t tell. What metric of “most popular” is the author using?
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Which is why Macs only come pre installed with the App Store and finder
whatever the Windows App Store is called.
Officially it’s called the “Microsoft Store” but I don’t think anyone really calls it that (Same with the “Windows Explorer” until they renamed it to “File Explorer” as everyone has been calling it)
Is this supposed to be a cocky joke? I can’t tell. What metric of “most popular” is the author usiing?
Number of active users.
those numbers are nonexistent for most distribution, since forcing telemetry isn’t really a cool move in the free software world
The number of IPs hitting their software repos can be a decent way of estimating active users. Also, ISO downloads and so on.
There’s also the check connectivity to Internet ping that network manager does. Arch Linux defaults to Arch’s servers, etc.
Local repo mirrors are pretty standard in the enterprise world are they not?
Any company invested enough to host a local mirror will not give a blank install of Ubuntu to their employees though.
You can argue that other distros are popular as well, but when it comes to the “I’ve heard of this Linux thing, let’s try it out” crowd Ubuntu is the goto option, no doubt about it. And the impact on this crowd is exactly what is discussed in the article.
Hundreds of thousands of people using eg. Debian plus a software profile plus a sources.list file with an intranet address don’t count as using Debian?
I’m not arguing about the contents of the article, I’m discussing specifically the relevance of generating usage statistics based on IP hits and ISO downloads.For the purpose of the article: no they don’t.
If you want to discuss telemetry or how to measure popularity of Linux Distros, please submit and link me an appropriate post, I’ll be happy to discuss it there. But it simply adds nothing to the discussion here.
And how do you know that number? Let alone the numbers of other distributions?
I reckon a nifty idea instead of preinstalling software is to have a file extension finder that suggests software based on the file extension. Sure, there are some file types that have multiple uses, but many proprietary solutions use distinct extensions, making it quite straightforward to organize the recommendations.
You don’t even need to look at the extension to identify most file formats, as there are unique magic numbers stored at the beginning of most (binary) formats. Only when a single binary format is reused to appear as two different formats to the user, e.g. zip and cbz are extensions relevant. This is how the
filecommand and most (?) Linux file explorers identify files, and why file extensions are traditionally largely irrelevant on Linux/Unix.This means your idea of suggesting software based on the file type is even more practicable than you described.
I’d love having that tbh. Doesn’t even need to be fancy, could just as well suggest packages in the terminal. It would be massively helpful.
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Yeah that’s a pretty funny error, seems to forget that MS office is a very expensive bit of software and doesn’t come included with windows.
It does in recent times. My laptop came pre installed with win 11 and office home 2021(i think).
All i had to do was click activate to link the key to my email account. It showed up as a notification on first login.
Even if not activated it still would open files with that warning.
Including a trial to incentivize users into paying for the software doesn’t make it “built-in”.
Not trial. Home Single user license.
Absolutely. The author is criticizing something that can easily be solved by… installing more software that it’s probably in the same media a user used to install the OS. I don’t see the point of this review other than “I need to write something in my blog today.”
I think the whole point of this exercise is to not have the extra software in the media. Could be wrong.
Which media are you talking about? The installation media, or the running system?
Installation media.
Oh okay.
What metric of “most popular” is the author using?
Ubuntu claimed be the most popular Linux distro on their website, backed by hot air. People who didn’t know any better took that at face value, including the author of this shoddy article, perhaps.
They do have statistics about how many systems send upgrade pings. There are some caveats to that, but I believe the difference with other distros is significant enough for that not to matter.
What other desktop Linux would be more popular? Fedora? Arch?
Ubuntu chooses to log upgrade pings to create such statistics. Contrary to Ubuntu, others respect your privacy, and don’t log upgrade pings. Hypothetically, if Ubuntu is the only distro that logs upgrade pings even though everyone uses Linux Mint in practice as an example, they can’t claim to be the most popular distro as for a matter of fact, that reality has more people that use Linux Mint than Ubuntu.
Linux Mint is even more troublesome, because I believe it uses Ubuntu’s repos as well - meaning that they’d be counted in Ubuntu’s logs?
That said, with the exception of probably Distrowatch pageviews (which of course have very little relation to actual usage), AFAIK all proxy metrics we have do point to Ubuntu’s dominance, as well as anecdotal evidence such as the distros you see people using at e.g. FOSDEM. I’d be interested to see any data that might show otherwise though, but until then, my working hypothesis is that Ubuntu is still the most popular desktop Linux.
This is not a big issue. In the installer or first time boot welcome pop up, just add a page where some popular apps are shown and can be selected to be downloaded and installed.
Also what the fuck does the author mean when he says ubuntu is special¿? It is not that different from other distros and the ways that it is different does not make it better
Also what the fuck does the author mean when he says ubuntu is special¿?
There are two ways I read that:
- Ubuntu is special just to the author. It’s their favourite distribution and it holds sentimental value to them. The author doesn’t want Ubuntu to change, because they like it just the way it is.
- Ubuntu is special because of its high popularity between new users. For a long time, Ubuntu was/is suggested to newbies because of its ease of use and solid defaults. The removal of the apps could make the experience of future new users worse, so less people would stick with Linux.
Or alternatively they can add similar to the mediacodecs and such check a “install the office and other helpful stuff”
I like this. This would likely cover 95% of the use cases.
That would be the best solution. Alas, it is missing.
Just make it that if I open an office document that the software center shoes up with “app not available yet, here are the best options”.
That’s what windows does. It works… Poorly.
What if users want the smoothest out of the box experience as possible?
If they want to download and install everything themselves, they should use something like Arch Linux or a minimal install of Ubuntu.
Oh I agree, just install the basics. You can swap software for other packages later if you need to. Just saying that if they want to go i that direction, at least make it easy to quickly install.
Yeah; if I was picking the aspects of Ubuntu where they were making a mistake, ‘minimal default install but easy to download more’ would not be what I’d have selected - that actually sounds a good thing. Having too much out-of-date crud was starting to be a problem. ‘Everything is a snap, which runs like a three-legged dog even on a powerful machine, and causes me disk space issues on less powerful ones too’ - that’s a problem. ‘Keeping on messing with Firefox, and replacing my ppa version with an out of date snap, which means I’ve changed my works machine over to Mint to avoid their nonsense?’ - that’s a problem.
I love it. Ubuntu is already bloated enough and have been using the minimal install for a long time. It’s actually better imo. because now the “minimal” version will hopefully include just a bit more so have to manually install a bit less. If I ever got lazy and took the full install I alway uninstall or remove the bloat from my sidebar as the first thing anyway. Hopefully this will strike a nice ballance instead
Clearly you should be able to choose between an install without anything on it, an install with just a few apps and an install with all basic apps.
That would be perfect. We shouldn’t forget that a lot of beginners are using Linux for the first time with Ubuntu and you shouldn’t ask too much of them otherwise they’ll just go back to windows/apple.
I’m surprised by the comments here, even though the article predicted the opinion of long time Linux users. I had hoped for a more considerate opinion regarding a distro also aimed at new users.
This is a bad move and I hope they reverse their decision for the 24.04 LTS release.i mainly agree on the decision paralysis point and that they had a minimal install opinion available before.
I use arch. Choosing your favorite music player is fun. Choosing your favorite music player, video player, pdf viewer, Browser, file explorer, system monitor, office suite and mail program is not fun. This also completely negates the “faster to productivity, from download to first boot in less time” argument. If you have an install script prepared: yes. If you’re a new user: no.
I would be shocked if I install an OS and couldn’t open media.
Choice is good but giving a direction is also a good idea. Maybe they could introduce a media pack of some sorts.
Screencap / screenshot tools should be included by default tho.
I thought more the logic behind this move was that people use a lot of web services these days so a lot of software on which is pre installed is redundant and hence a waste of resources.
100% this. And if you expect people to discover the software they need on their own then you need a superb software discovery experience. AFAIK Ubuntu does not have that at the moment. I read they are working on a better software center but wonder if that will be enough.
I like the minimal install, but think there should be a choice to install an office friendly version.
Article author is being melodramatic about how much of a laborious task it is to press a couple buttons to install software yourself, but it’s also not hard for a distro to include optional sets of software packages available for selection during install.
It is for you and me, but imagine a new user. One who tries Linux for the first time. This user will be lost. When he or she needs to google “which software on Ubuntu to open files of type .bla” the Nth time, I can see them throwing up their hands in frustration.
And, as a long term consequence, ratings of Linux distributions saying “Unbuntu - no longer recommended for new users”.
I don’t know man. Mac OS also has no software to open a lot of file types out of the box but even people with little to computer knowledge are able to download the things they need from the app store. They can do the same in ubuntu as well
I tried Linux mint for the first time back when I was 13 or 14, it was a bit confusing at first but I was pretty good about searching the Internet for information, that honestly seems to be the biggest issue with a lot of tech-illiterate people, inability or ignorance of being able to search for information and then apply it.
I use arch. Choosing your favorite music player is fun. Choosing your favorite music player, video Player, Browser, file explorer, system monitor, office suite and mail program is not fun.
So far, this was not necessary. If the intention is to drive off any potential new users of the Linux range of systems, making it hostile to beginners is an effective way.
Which is why beginners don’t use Arch.
I can see the reasoning behind having a slim installation media available. I think if they’re planning to test this, 23.10 being a testing version, they should have two actual media builds. A full-fat one and a slim one. That way they can measure what people download. They should also measure this over an LTS cycle as many of us don’t use non-LTS versions. Perhaps they already have data from the existing installer where people can choose between minimal and standard install. I feel Joey has a point about throwing new users at a barebones install. That would not be a good experience. Even if a slim install media is available, I think so should full-fat.
This is great, less bloat by default is good.
If they add a window that comes up on first start that lets people pick some apps from a default list, that would be the ideal setup.
There’s a lot of ridicule regarding this article but chiming in my opinion. This makes Ubuntu less appealing for me. Granted I would use Mint anyway but, the entire focus of Ubuntu is supposed to be to bring new people in. If I’m helping a friend convert to the OS from Microsoft, I’m not going to want to have to info dump “ok so you will also need x y z and m” for it to properly work. It will be hard enough to have had to explain the install process. This is without mentioning the live aspects of it. I always tell people “try the live version first and if you like it go for it” well if the live process is now a dumbed down minimal… what’s the appeal for new members. I think this is counterproductive to be honest, if I was looking for a skim distro I would just recommend another system, that’s the glory of Ubuntu and why it was recommended for starters, it just “works”
I’m honestly just impressed by how much this guy has grown. I remember when he was going on rants about how much he hates atheists.
Who is this guy?
Ubuntu is making many mistakes recently, but this is a pretty good idea. Just install whatever software you need.
The mistake is using Ubuntu
Yup, moved to Mint Cinnamon in ~2015 and hated it and switched to MX Xfce since then. MX best distro ever 😁
