After a couple of months I was just about ready to format Ubuntu off my various PC/laptops. Tired of being flamed by the “supporting Community” for not loving their CLI. I bought manuals (they don’t flame me) but got fed up with common stuff that DID just work under M$ proving a step too far in Linux (mobile phone, VPN, BBC website).

In-case your wondering; it was finding this site from flame-central that persuaded me to have another go. That and a mate who got most of the web add-ons needed set-up for me. RCJ wrote:

“But, even after some help from a Canonical advisor who came and installed a few add-ons such as Flash”

Do they plan to off that service to every noob who just wants to watch a youtube vid with his/her friends? That’s what be needed if the forums keep lighting up and wonderful help of the type created by Ubuntucat is not the standard.

Hanging in there with 9.10
Marti

That’s exactly right, and, much as we don’t like it, it’s only a problem if it’s also not true.

As it happens, it is NOT true, so in some ways it really is irresponsible journalism. He missed the chance to inform all the BBC’s readers that there really is an alternative and what some of the simple steps were to use it, like the new meaning of Add/Remove Programs. I was very disappointed to see that.

On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of problem new users bump into. They don’t read documentation. They just don’t. There’s no point saying they “should.” I think Sebastian’s point about a popup firstrun tutorial would help there. Even the busy Cellan-Jones might have scanned it :).

However, going to a program’s web page, finding the download, and then getting it installed from there is still generally how users think about getting software — and that aspect is less easy, if not difficult, in my limited experience on Linux.

In conclusion I think a lot of the problems people face in relation to this are due to the preconception of installing things through installers (separate “EXE” or maybe a MSI), rather than as packages using a package manager.

There were no disclaimers about “I had a few difficulties, but learning anything new can take time, and I spent only 24 hours with it.”

The take-away message Rory Cellan-Jones left his audience with is “Ubuntu is a waste of time and too much bother. No one but geeks would want to use it anyway. It’s too complicated. Stick with Windows.”

I’m not saying Ubuntu is for everyone, but this “article” is rubbish and not worthy of the BBC.

My favorite is Dust.
I digress, anybody who tries it out without guidance or technical know-how of Ubuntu will probably not know their way around it. So, you might just tell the journalist upfront what she did wrong and how to correct it. I doubt she is bashing Ubuntu for this one tiny thing, so there should be no reason to get up in arms about this.

(I can just see him popping another buttered scone into his mouth as he hunt-and-peck types that line into his company-provided laptop, smearing more grease on the keys in the process.)

He’s a lazy journalist making himself popular with another rendition of the theme song of a lazy generation, one who “can’t be bothered” to lift that finger. “Why doesn’t it do this for me? What’s wrong with it?” ::whinge::

I expect Canonical thought as a tech journo he might have read the ‘Help’ in order to find out how to install extra software… it would seem he must have navigated to a site he could download a .deb, rpm or source package of Audacity instead.
Would his 24 hour experience have been any the better for some basic training from those who gave him the Ubuntu machine? Would he have had a different opinion had he tried Ubuntu for a week? I doubt it.
As Ubuntucat points out in one of his ‘essays’ :You must examine your motives before moving to Ubuntu.

What motives does a tech journo have? None, I guess,(already uses Win or a Mac at work, laptop provided and supported for working away from office , software apps paid for by company…) so he will not necessarily rave over the experience because he already gets his PC OS and apps for free.. and if he failed to install a program in the repos’ ?, Well, I would not expect him to be writing a favourable review on his 48 hours of installing a dual boot on his new Win 7 laptop either!