I must admit. I am fortunate to have a Mother that, to a degree, understands my involvement in Linux. She understands what it is I’m working towards, and she understands Bug #1. She still doesn’t understand why I do not have a job yet, but that’s a story for another day.
While she still uses Windows mostly, a curse mainly due to the software she must use as part of her employment (she is a public sector Teacher), she does dual boot Ubuntu with WinXP — and religiously uses Firefox and Thunderbird in the latter.
Until Feisty was released, she was stuck on Dapper due to her VIA video card’s disagreements with the VIA and Vesa drivers. It didn’t fail completely, but the refresh rate was so fouled that scrolling was painful because of screen redraw. Back then, she called this ‘the reason’ she didn’t use Ubuntu more often.
Now that she can use Ubuntu sanely, she does use it more often, mainly for GNOME sudoku and web browsing. However, she has found a new adoption killer. The scanner part of her multifunction center (she even reported it!), and I’m sure that the bug will go by the next release, and she’ll be pretty much set.
It amuses me though, and I know it amuses many other linux users, just what flaws get annointed by newcomers as adoption killers. Especially when you consider the alternatives.
Whilst on our return trip from Spain, stuck in a waiting lounge at Singapore’s Changi Airport, Sarah struck up a conversation with a Microsoft employee. I was sitting on the floor near them, so had not noticed the corporate logo on his shirt and only found out when I passed Sarah one of the nice shiny new 7.04 CDs, to hand to him.
He had tried Ubuntu, he confessed — and complimented it. As expected he then asked ‘Have you used Vista?’ My reply was ‘No, I can’t afford it’.
As a non-gamer, a video card is fairly cheap to buy, as is a new multifunction center. Definately cheaper than AU$300-$800 (the price range of Vista) — I could easily get both a new video card and new multifunction center for $300. Oh, and I would also want more RAM — to get the same performance as Ubuntu gives me. That is my adoption killer.
Meanwhile, there are also those other things. The ones that I refrained from mentioning to Mr Microsoft at the airport. You know, all those horror stories of DRM, Genuine (Dis)Advantage, and so forth? They have Mum spooked too. She recently bought a laptop, and had the choice of XP or Vista at no cost difference.
She is quite happy with her XP laptop. It even runs the Ubuntu livecd fine.
I had similar issues with a similar printer. This may help you: http://www.kallisti.net.nz/blog/2006/11/ubuntu-and-the-epson-stylus-cx5900/
Didnt you know … Mom’s rock
Mine loves Ubuntu for the games, Monkey bubble hustles Mahjongg in popularity !
I think that’s so awesome that your mom (your MOM!) reported a bug.
You rocks! (And are beatiful too) Good luck
Vista is not actually that more demanding about the hardware. That is mostly just fud.
Even the ~5eur integrated gma950 can handle full Aero awesomely. If you got a poorer adapter such as some Via chip you can always use the classic interface. It’s aok, and it’s not like if you will get stellar performance out of that hardware anyways (like Beryl etc).
The memory requirement is comparable to that of XPs. 1 gigabyte is aok for basic tasks as with XP.
Hard discs are so cheap nowadays that it’s pretty stunning. Vista requires roughly 15 gigabytes (against Ubuntus roughly 4?) but it doesn’t really seem to use it. It shouldn’t be a problem for anything that is not really eol anyways.
The DRM things have worked flawlessly, I got nothing to complain about there. In fact I haven’t even noticed any of that stuff. I use Vista daily, and it’s pretty aok. Granted, it’s not perfect (they should fix the kernel’s file io stuff and couple other small things) but it really isn’t as bad as some people (mostly they haven’t really used it) are yelling about.
‘Have you used Vista?’ My reply was ‘No, I can’t afford it’.
That is *their* adoption killer, I suppose.
What’s your Linux-adoption killer?…
Mellissa Draper points out that every has their reasons for not adopting Linux. Whether it be the software they have to use, the hardware, or other reasons.
But she raises an interesting point: if your Linux-adoption hurdle is hardware compatibilit…
So, you censor the comments that are against your views – even if they are reasoned and written with good manners. Interesting. And lame.
“He had tried Ubuntu, he confessed — and complimented it. As expected he then asked ‘Have you used Vista?’ My reply was ‘No, I can’t afford it’. ”
Haha – quote of the day!
And your mom rocks.
@erik
No. It is called sleep. I was in bed when you posted both your comments.
Your impatience and unwillingness to accept that I don’t want the handful of porn spams slip through akismet, has earned you the label of “Troll” in my eyes. Congratulations.
Nice post. I have to admit, sometimes I got upset with missing drivers for my Linux, but these days I’m just tryin to replace my non-working hardware with hardware that is nicely supported. With a little luck a friend has always some older/non-used hardware laying around, otherwise there is always ebay and the like
My DX3850 needs only two steps to make the scanner work. I think it will also work for other CX/DX Multifunctionals:
$ lsusb|grep Epson
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 04b8:0818 Seiko Epson Corp.
Then add the following line to /etc/sane.d/epson.conf:
usb 0x4b8 0×818
where the numbers are the ids from lsusb (starting with 0x instead of 0)
I know the adoption killer for many laptop and dual screen users is that one feature of Windows thats been around since 98 that I love:
Right-click desktop > Properties > Settings
Considering some laptop users go back and forth between single and dual monitors multiple times a day, not being able to easily configure display settings is a deal killer.
michael: good news! That functionality is coming in XRandR 1.2, which should be in the next iteration of Ubuntu (iirc it’s already in Debian Sid).
I plan on writing a pretty gtkmm-based method for configging screens with XRandR 1.2, but it really belongs with your window manager or software stack ultimately.
The super-bug with which Mom’s problem is likely associated – links are to my comments.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/85488/comments/282
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/85488/comments/300
@Mark
No, this has nothing to do with a kernel problem. This has to do with a missing entry in the sane backend.
Exactly what the first reply to the post said.