Techthrob.com

I love Ubuntu. I’ve been using Linux for years, and I think it’s the greatest distribution to date. But let’s face it – like it or not, the user experience is worrisome at times. Things don’t work, programs act up, and hair gets torn out. These are my personal peeves with Ubuntu – things I’ve had trouble with, or hear being asked over and over again in Ubuntu support locations.

While some brands, such as HP and Epson, deserve applause for their attention to Linux customers, most companies don’t give a second thought to writing Linux drivers for their products. As such, it’s up the community to figure out how to print to these devices; and that can mean excellent printing, in some cases – but in many, it means you’re going to have serious problems.

This means that, before you buy a new printer, you had better check that it’s compatible with Linux first; or, if you’re switching operating systems, your old printer may-or-may-not become a paper-weight: this was the case with my Dell All-in-One, which turned out to be a re-branded Lexmark, and have absolutely no support.

Even when a printer has full support, the other functions – the scanning and faxing abilities, for example – don’t always work out of the box. The forums are littered with people asking, “it says it works, but why doesn’t it?”

While support is getting better, most ATI and NVidea cards aren’t plug-n-play yet. Sure, you can use the open-source drivers for these cards – and applause to the community for the work they’ve done to make these drivers work – but if you want true 3D acceleration, as in, the 3D acceleration you paid for when you dropped a few hundred bucks on a video card, you want the “real” drivers.

Unfortunately, these “real” drivers are unsupported. They’re closed-source, and they may break when you update a critical part of your system, like X or the kernel. Experiences installing these drivers can range from a minimal hassle to a walk through the fires of hell; some users simply give up after hours upon hours of frustrating command-line interaction and broken Xorg files.

Like video, there are two options for Flash in Ubuntu: the Adobe plugin, and the open-source Gnash plugin. Neither are optimal.

Gnash isn’t nearly as complete as Adobe’s plugin; it works, but not with every website and every movie. Hopefully this will change soon, as it is considered a high-priority project, and is under very heavy development. And it’s needed now, more than never, because…

Adobe’s Linux plugin works fairly well, but uses more resources (especially CPU) than on Windows. However, like most proprietary software on Linux, things are prone to breaking. Just recently, Flash in Ubuntu Broke with serious ramifications for a large amount of users. While there is a temporary patch available, it’s recommended that most users wait for an official fix. Because Flash is becoming such an integral part of the web, this is simply impossible for most users; in the meantime, the Ubuntu Forums are littered with posts from users having problems with Flash.

One of the most common questions of new Ubuntu users is, “why don’t my mp3s play,” or “how come I can’t play my DVDs?” Well, the more-informed users know why: licensing. But this doesn’t matter to the average end-user, who simply wants her media collection to play, without having to install loads of extra packages, and be warned that what she’s doing might be illegal in her country.

Linux Mint went ahead and included the required non-free software automatically. It’s understandable that Ubuntu isn’t able to do that; and the frustration on this one should be pointed more towards certain companies, lobbyist organizations, and government entities than at Ubuntu; but the frustration exists all the same, and it makes for a more annoying user experience.

This is a small, but a truly annoying problem. I just got a new mouse – one of those new-fangled devices with more than just two buttons and a scroll wheel. Ubuntu automatically mapped the other buttons for me, but instead of being separate buttons, they became another right and middle click; so, when I hit them accidentally, bad things would happen (folders would be created; random text would be pasted into instant messages with my mother…bad things).

Being resolved to fix this problem, I went about the arduous task of re-mapping these buttons. In order to this, I had to install a kernel module, edit my xorg.conf file (always a fun time), and restart a bunch of services. And all that did was create new identifiers for the buttons! Next, it’s entering obscure commands into text configuration files, and then another bout of restarting X.

In Windows, I would have just loaded up the driver’s configuration program, and mapped the buttons to whatever I like. This is something so simple that I’m surprised it hasn’t been fixed yet. More and more mice come with more and more buttons; yet Ubuntu doesn’t play well with them without a lot of advanced work.

This is another vendor-based problem. Desktop Linux is just too small of a market for companies to spend development time (read: money) on, so the drivers come mainly from the community; as with printing, this can mean great-working hardware for one device, and a paper-weight for another.

Wireless support in Linux goes on a by-chipset basis; which means that you need to be very, very careful when picking out a wireless card. Two cards, though they may be identical makes and models, might use a different chipset; one may be supported, the other may not. And though wireless can be plug-and-play for some chipsets, often times it isn’t, and you’ll find yourself searching Google for the appropriate tutorials.

There’s no doubt that Ubuntu can be used, successfully, as a full-time desktop operating system. But use it for long enough, and you’ll start to notice that there are bugs hiding out in lots of places. I’m not talking about the show-stoppers, like the ones I’ve listed above; but rather, the little ones that aren’t very significant, but are rather numerous.

For example, I just looked up a word in my dictionary applet, and at first the window appeared partially off-screen. You learn to deal with these sorts of things, so I tried closing/opening the window again; this time, it appeared completely on-screen, but the content was too wide for the window, so I got a horizontal scroll-bar, when what should have happened is for the window to size itself to fit its contents.

When you use Ubuntu for long enough, you don’t really notice these little things unless you’re specifically looking for them. They are there, however – in fact, I’d venture to say that they’re everywhere. I guarantee that if you pay a little closer attention to your desktop use, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Or, just take a look at the bug lists for Open Source projects – they’re long, long lists, full of a lot of tiny problems.

But this is what we paid for; which is to say, we didn’t pay. We got a completely functional, powerful desktop operating system, and we got it for free. Even support can be free if you’re not interested in paying. So when there’s a problem – or problems, which there inevitably are – remember that you’re using Free, Open Source Software; and remember to use the tools available to you to work through your troubles.