The rush for Linux

After witnessing the sudden rush on the web for Canonical's new version of Ubuntu I have come to a few conclusions that seem to surface following the recent "Linux Fever". I have absolutely no idea if any of these have been pointed out before but considering the number of blogs and articles reviewing and commenting on the subject they probably have been already.

Anyway, let's start right from the top. I'm not sure what people were expecting from this new release of Ubuntu,version 8.04 codenamed Hardy Heron, but it looks as if it was gonna be the "messiah" of OSs destined to bring down you know who from its throne. Far from that I've seen more hating towards this release than any other before, not only did it become obvious to me that the crowd creating this hate was doing it on false judgement but also it in a quite harsh way. Surely some of the accusations were justified but others like why Canonical couldn't keep up with the number of download requests was simply unfair, I mean take it easy, it's not like there aren't alternative mirrors someone could try...

Another thing was this girlfriend test I read on a news site. The story is that the writer gave a number of tests to his girlfriend and she had to complete them in Ubuntu to see how easy the Ubuntu OS is for the computer illiterate. But what I object here is the girl in test wasn't computer illiterate, she was Linux illiterate, so don't tell me she couldn't search on the internet to get some help for some of the fundamental philosophies of Linux (ie. Package Management, alternatives of Windows applications). Well damn, I thought the whole point of Linux was not to have an alternative to Windows but something free and different, thus the big number of distributions someone can choose from, although that could be called a disadvantage sometimes. All software have a learning curve, and I believe Ubuntu are amongst the most easy ones to learn. Another example from the aforementioned article is testing how well the user would be able to use The Gimp, yeah it has a kind of cumbersome interface when you first see it, especially when you compare it to Photoshop, but did the writer forget to write that he had to buy Photoshop?Or did he forget to mention that The Gimp comes preinstalled with Ubuntu? For free? Or perhaps he also forgot to test how well she'd do on a test with OpenOffice applications, one of the most basic software suites available. Next time if you want to make a real test I believe you should get 100 computer illiterate persons and test them in a controlled environment, now that could be called unbiased.

Of course, I don't believe Canonical and Ubuntu are innocent, rather the opposite, they too have made mistakes that not only create a false image of the Linux world but also the fact that they overhyped their recent release. One of the mistakes I believe they made not only with this release but with previous also was not including a guide for first time users that would run at the system's first startup and show some of the basic tasks and how the UI works in general, for example that you can find and install applications in the Add/Remove program. Something else is the choice of applications that they decided to include, like Firefox 3 beta 5, I simply cannot understand why they would make a choice of including programs still at testing phase.

My opinion is if you want to be the conduit for people to come into the Linux world then you have to do the best job possible. Some mistakes were more than obvious and I wonder how the Ubuntu developers let them just fly by. You can't work on the bleeding edge constantly, Linux became known for being stable and reliable, not for showing off. Perhaps they should have made the best of what they already have and then add anything new, but then again I'm just an observant in this race for prevailing.