The failings of Ubuntu, in my personal experience, largely don't have much to do with Linux itself, but with the general ecosystem. As of right now my ethernet controller just randomly panics and I can't do anything to restore network connectivity but restarting my machine. This is clearly documented in a bug report on Launchpad, this is a known and confirmed issue. The update to Ubuntu 10.04 broke LIRC for me - also a documented and known issue. I'm also getting random problems preventing DVDs from working with messages logged along the lines of the DVD being resized (I've had this problem off and on for ages). I've encountered reports of other people having the same problem. The NVidia drivers randomly cause XOrg to crash. I haven't had this problem in 10.04 yet, but the weakness of these drivers have been documented too, hence Nouveau except it doesn't have 3D acceleration yet. The 64 bit version of Flash doesn't support fullscreen video properly. The 9.10 update (if memory serves) partially crippled LIRC for me in using my IR blaster. Shared printing broke in Ubuntu 9.10, and SMB printer browsing randomly broke for me too. I can print to my shared printer when I restart SMB and enter its name manually. I've had file system corruption with ext4. It literally seems like more stuff is broken than is not, I've always had something or another broken, and maybe I'm anal, but I like having stuff work.
None of this touches on the various usability problems I've encountered or problems I had some time ago, these are all just recent problems. Like I said, most of these have been documented and acknowledged. A couple might be fixed in the 2.6.33 kernels, but I've been unable to get sound the the NVidia driver to work in these kernels last time I tried. Like I said, I realize that Linux itself is not to blame for all of this. I appreciate something like LIRC existing pretty cool, I'm willing to overlook some problems.
What is difficult to overlook is the constant regression and coin flip as to what will go wrong whenever I update. I should not have to wipe and reinstall an OS in 2010 as a troubleshooting technique, the idea of bit rot or some sort of corruption is weird voodoo, and it is most frustrating when I go ahead and do something like this anyway only for it not to make a difference anyway.
So, it's 2010. We've been hoping that Desktop Linux will be more bulletproof for a long time now, it's just not there. Monitor arrangement is nowhere near as solid as its been on the Mac since probably the 1990s or something. The commitment from vendors like NVidia, ATI, Adobe, and probably many others is just not there. I'm sure some progress will be made, but it is so far away from being an OS that Grandma can use that it's laughable. Yes, one can setup a rig for Grandma for specific tasks and she can never update it, and yes Desktop Linux can be functional in some cases, but how about Grandma or even Mom being self sufficient like some can approach being with Windows or OS X?
Is there any reason why I should not give up on Desktop Linux, guys? I don't mean to be troll-ish at all, I'm a very heavy Linux/BSD user, I like the idea of consolidating on Linux for my day-to-day use, I'm rooting for it. But, it is what it is. Is there a point where it's just a complete waste of effort to expend more resources into Desktop Linux? Now that I'm a full-time freelancer, I certainly don't have as much interest as I used to in fiddling with Linux for my entertainment purposes, it's just a huge time sink.
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Joe Auty, NetMusician
NetMusician helps musicians, bands and artists create beautiful, professional, custom designed, career-essential websites that are easy to maintain and to integrate with popular social networks.
www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
Joe Auty, NetMusician
www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
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