Thought I'd provide my 2 cents - there's the general theme that most "Harry Homeowner"s don't really care what makes their shiny new computer run, as long as it does.
I use both XP and Ubuntu and yes, I'm happy that for my needs the two are pretty much interchangable (web, email, casual development), and I'm sure that for a lot of people the two would also be interchangable, eg OpenOffice is a good replacement for Office, Firefox for IE, Thunderbird for Outlook etc, however I'm not 100% sure that Harry is 100% ready for Linux just yet. (Or Linux is 100% ready for him!)
I happily sit somewhere in the space between newbie and expert so I generally can find my way round the gubbins of the things, but while the installation was indeed a sinch, I can't for the life of me get Ubuntu to use WPA-PSK on the wireless card. I've trawled through numerous tutorials and still no luck. It takes all of 10 seconds to set this up in XP.
One thing windows does quite well, and Harry expects, is (generally) that things are easy enough to get going - I've given up in frustration over the wireless and use a big chunk of cable instead. Getting this going should be simple. What about other things that Harry likes - webcams, ipod, things that plug into the USB, skype, printers etc etc. Will they all work? First time?
For Ubuntu, or indeed any Linux to really be useable to the masses things need "to work" - no trawling through forums thanks - also the hardware manufactures need to be on the ball and supply drivers for *all* O/Ses.
Having said that things are getting better - bar the wireless everything works well - incl. mono, which like most Linux flavored things is a lot cheaper than its counterpart :-)
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Harry Homeowner doesn't care?
Thought I'd provide my 2 cents - there's the general theme that most "Harry Homeowner"s don't really care what makes their shiny new computer run, as long as it does.
I use both XP and Ubuntu and yes, I'm happy that for my needs the two are pretty much interchangable (web, email, casual development), and I'm sure that for a lot of people the two would also be interchangable, eg OpenOffice is a good replacement for Office, Firefox for IE, Thunderbird for Outlook etc, however I'm not 100% sure that Harry is 100% ready for Linux just yet. (Or Linux is 100% ready for him!)
I happily sit somewhere in the space between newbie and expert so I generally can find my way round the gubbins of the things, but while the installation was indeed a sinch, I can't for the life of me get Ubuntu to use WPA-PSK on the wireless card. I've trawled through numerous tutorials and still no luck. It takes all of 10 seconds to set this up in XP.
One thing windows does quite well, and Harry expects, is (generally) that things are easy enough to get going - I've given up in frustration over the wireless and use a big chunk of cable instead. Getting this going should be simple. What about other things that Harry likes - webcams, ipod, things that plug into the USB, skype, printers etc etc. Will they all work? First time?
For Ubuntu, or indeed any Linux to really be useable to the masses things need "to work" - no trawling through forums thanks - also the hardware manufactures need to be on the ball and supply drivers for *all* O/Ses.
Having said that things are getting better - bar the wireless everything works well - incl. mono, which like most Linux flavored things is a lot cheaper than its counterpart :-)