October 6th, 2008

Linux ready to replace Windows? Not yet…

Posted by Ed Bott @ 11:28 am

Categories: Hardware, Linux

Tags: Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX, Operating Systems, Open Source, Software, Ed Bott

Over at JKOnTheRun, James Kendrick uncovers a fascinating statistic originally published in Laptop Magazine:

Andy Tung, Director of US Sales for MSI … told Laptop that their experience shows that netbooks with Linux are returned four times more often than those with Windows XP.  This would indicate what others have already noted, many consumers pick up the cheaper systems and then realize that the Linux system is not what they are used to so they return it.

And this is for a product that is targeted at early adopters who are far more technically sophisticated than average; the MSI Wind is a tiny, dirt-cheap portable PC that has been selling like gangbusters to the digital elite and gadget freaks since its launch in June. I would assume that this audience would be more forgiving of rough edges and usability gotchas than more mainstream PC buyers. This comment by MSI’s Andy Tung from the original interview highlights the uphill struggle that PC makers have when dealing with Linux:

Our internal research has shown that … the main cause [of the higher return rates for Linux-based machines] is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don’t know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it’s not what they are used to. They don’t want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store.

The interviewers interrupt at this point to note that they “struggled with the Linux version of the Wind U90” as well and ask whether the company plans to customize a Linux OS for the machine instead of using an off-the-shelf distro:

We plan to bring the Linux version to the U.S by the end of the year. But we are working on some of the issues with the SUSE Linux and even continue to explore other flavors of Linux. We have discussed Ubuntu with a Mac OS type of look and feel. We are talking to different suppliers to figure out the best user experience.

Finding software developers to build and support a great user experience that ties hardware and software together isn’t cheap or easy. It’s hard to imagine how that job can get done at all, much less be done well, on a PC that sells for $399 or less.

I have a couple of Linux-based systems here that I use occasionally for testing and just to stay on top of what’s happening in the wide world of computing.  I have been impressed with the way that popular Linux distros like Ubuntu have improved with each new release; these days, Linux is a great choice for technically sophisticated users who don’t mind being far, far out of the mainstream. But for people who don’t have the time or the inclination to make fundamental changes, it’s a nonstarter. If I were to switch to Linux for daily use, I would have to dramatically change my work habits and learn to use a very different set of tools than I use today. The same would be true of any of my home or small business clients.

As someone who writes about Windows for a living, I get a disproportionate amount of feedback from people who argue that open-source software is a panacea and that dumping Windows for Linux is the answer to every problem that affects the Windows ecosystem. The market is doing a pretty good job of proving that they’re wrong, as this example shows.

July 15th, 2008

Windows Update versus Ubuntu Update

Posted by Ed Bott @ 10:00 am

Categories: Linux, Security, Windows Vista

Tags: Ubuntu, Microsoft Windows Update, Operating System, Update, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Operating Systems, Software, Ed Bott

A few months ago, Steve Ballmer publicly noted that Windows Vista was “a work in progress.” That inspired a predictable outpouring of Vista-bashing. After all, look how many updates Windows Vista has had since it was first released. Obviously, it was a disaster, or there would have been no need for that many updates, right? Why couldn’t Microsoft get it right the first time?

The reality? All modern operating systems used as mainstream business and consumer platforms are “works in progress” and require frequent updates to fix bugs and resolve security issues (and occasionally to add features). Many of those bugs and security issues don’t surface until the code gets deployed widely, and even then it sometimes takes detective work to figure out where the actual problem is. Presumably, the big issues get worked out within a few months, and the pace of updates drops off (but not to zero).

I thought about this over the weekend when I opened up a Hyper-V virtual machine running Ubuntu Linux 8.04. This was a plain-vanilla install of Ubuntu, with no additional software except what is included with the downloaded distro. I had last used this VM 51 days earlier, at which point the OS release was about a month old. At that time, it was completely current with patches and updates, and I hadn’t reopened it since. (A side note: My Ubuntu and OpenSUSE 11 installations on this Hyper-V server were exceptionally easy and performance is excellent. I’ll be migrating my Fedora installation from Virtual PC 2007 to Hyper-V and adding an OpenBSD machine on this platform as well.)

I expected that I would have to install a few updates. But I was surprised to see how many.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 29th, 2007

Vista Hands On #13: Connect to a shared folder on a Linux machine

Posted by Ed Bott @ 10:59 am

Categories: Linux, Windows Vista

Tags:

As I noted earlier this week, I’ve been trying to get a Linux box installed on my network so I can explore interoperability issues between Windows and Linux. I can now report that I have succeeded in installing Ubuntu Linux 6.10 and it seems to be running well.

First problem I ran into was that the Vista machine couldn’t access shared resources on the Linux box and vice versa. I had no problem passing files back and forth between the Linux box and one running Windows XP. This post deals with the first problem, connecting to the shared resources on the Linux box. (I’ll tackle the issue of connecting to a Vista share in a follow-up post.)

There are two possible reasons why a Vista user can’t connect to a Linux share:

1. Windows Vista changes the authentication method for password-protected shares. In XP and previous versions, the system by default used two password hashes, the old-style LAN Manager (LM) and the newer NTLM version 2 (NTLMv2). (If you want the gory details, read this excellent article by Windows security guru Jesper Johansson. Although it was written using a beta version of Vista, the information is still accurate.) Older versions of the Samba server in Linux use only the LM hash, which means they have no trouble connecting to a default installation of XP but will fail when trying to talk to a default installation of Vista.

To fix this problem, you need to update the version of Samba on the Linux machine to 3.0.22 or higher. (If you’re using an earlier Samba version, you can downgrade Vista’s authentication to accept LM hashes, using either Local Security Policy Manager or a registry edit. I don’t recommend this option.)

2. Challenge #2 was to get Samba configured on the Ubuntu Linux machine. In my case, the samba-common package was installed and was at the correct revision (3.0.22–1), but the samba package itself was missing. (Update: On a second machine when I tried a clean install, smbfs was missing as well, and I was unsuccessful until I installed it.) After I installed the missing pieces, I had one more step to run through. From a Terminal window, I needed to add a Samba user and password. Windows users are accustomed to having file sharing and authentication handled using the credentials for their user account, but with a Samba server the databases are different. The syntax, in my case, was fairly straightforward:

sudo smbpasswd -a username

In this command, username is the same as my account name. You can create an account for another user as long as they already exist in the user account database.

(Note that you have to respond to three password prompts at this point. The first is for the root password of the logged-on user, and the next two set the SMB password for the user whose account you’re adding.)

After going through these steps, I was able to access shared folders on the Linux machine.

If any Linux experts in the audience want to add any comments or corrections or suggestions, hit the Talkback button and fire away. You can also reach me via e-mail by using the email link on my bio page.

March 27th, 2007

Why does Linux hate me?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 11:12 am

Categories: Hardware, Linux

Tags:

In the Talkback section of this blog, my loyal readers routinely urge me to switch to Linux. “Try it!” they say. “Once you do, you’ll never look back.” I’m perfectly willing to try, and indeed I’d love to have at least one Linux machine on hand so I can test interoperability scenarios here. About eight months ago I tried to install Ubuntu Linux 6.06 on a couple of systems here. The results were less than encouraging, and I’ve been using Linux in virtual machines since then.

Over the weekend, I thought I’d try again to put together a dual-boot Windows/Linux PC. I have another system I can devote to the cause, with decent specs and no hardware issues that I know of. This hardware is about as generic as an Intel-based system gets. I first built this system in late 2003 and have upgraded it extensively over the past three and a half years. System specs are as follows:

• Abit BL7–Raid motherboard
• 2.8 GHz Pentium 4
• 1.5GB RAM
• Two ATA drives (200GB, 250GB) connected to HPT370 controller (on motherboard) in non-RAID configuration
• ATI Radeon 9600 AGP video adapter
• Realtek RTL8169 Gigabit Ethernet adapter

I downloaded the latest release of SUSE Linux (10.2) and burned it to DVD. I also retrieved the Live CD copy of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS that I used last July and burned a fresh copy of Ubuntu 6.10. Here’s what happened next:

Read the rest of this entry »

November 2nd, 2006

Microsoft and Novell in Windows-Linux deal?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 11:35 am

Categories: Linux, Microsoft

Tags:

The Wall Street Journal (subscription only link) reports that Microsoft and Novell are going to announce an "unusual partnership" today: 

Under the pact, which isn't final, Microsoft will offer sales support of Suse Linux, a version of the operating system sold by Novell. The two companies have also agreed to develop technologies to make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft's Windows on their computers. The two companies are expected to announce details of their plan today at a press conference in San Francisco.

In addition, Microsoft won't assert rights over patents over software technology that may be incorporated into Suse Linux, the people said. Businesses that use Linux have long worried that Microsoft would one day file patent infringement suits against sellers of the rival software.

I'll post more details when I hear them. Given the long and sometimes acrimonious history between these two companies, this is very encouraging news for people who just want to get work done.

July 31st, 2006

Linux, XP, and my old PC

Posted by Ed Bott @ 2:15 pm

Categories: Linux, Windows 9X/Me, Windows XP

Tags:

Three weeks ago I reported on my experiences when I tried to install and use Ubuntu Linux. The reaction to that thread was mixed, with a fair number of commenters complaining that the VMWare test bed I chose wasn’t typical of what an average PC user would use.

Fair enough. To deal with that criticism, I put together two hardware test beds that are representative of what the world at large is likely to be using. One is a six-year-old HP 5135 notebook that had been running Windows Me. The other is a year-old Shuttle small-form-factor PC stuffed with industry-standard components. The newer machine has been a rock-solid performer for me, running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 day in and day out with hardly a hiccup. As for that Y2K-era notebook, it made the cut because I think no sensible person should run Windows Me, especially now that Microsoft no longer offers security updates for that OS. The question at hand is whether an upgrade to Windows XP makes sense, or whether it’s smarter to switch to Linux.

In today’s post, I’ll describe my surprising experiences

Read the rest of this entry »

July 10th, 2006

The pain of switching to a new OS

Posted by Ed Bott @ 5:00 am

Categories: Linux

Tags:

Last week I decided to install a new operating system on one computer in my lab. Not a big deal, really. I install, uninstall, and reinstall various Windows versions all the time. But this particular installation was just a little different. See how much of this sounds familiar:

• I made sure I had a CD containing the latest released version, placed that CD in the drive, and restarted. The system detected the CD, launched the boot files, and allowed me to create a new partition to install the OS files.
• I answered a few questions and then let the installation proceed automatically. After everything completed (well under an hour), I created a new user account and password and logged on.
• The very first thing I saw was a pop-up balloon warning me that there were updates available. When I clicked that icon, the screen dimmed and a password dialog box appeared. I couldn’t continue or perform any other task until I entered the administrator password.
• Even though I had installed the very latest version, I saw that there were 98 separate updates available, designed to “correct errors, eliminate security vulnerabilities and provide new features.” It took approximately a half-hour to download and install everything over my high-speed connection.
• After the updates completed, I was warned that I had to restart the computer before all of the updates would be effective. So I did.
• When I reached the desktop, I noticed that the system clock was off. I tried to adjust it and was greeted once again with the dimmed-out login screen where I was prompted to enter the administrator password.
• I noticed that the display resolution was set to 1024×768, but when I tried to change it to my monitor’s actual resolution of 1280×1024, I discovered that the settings dialog box didn’t offer that option and there was no obvious way to tweak it.

Ho-hum. Sounds like a typical Windows installation, with all the usual complaints: too many security updates, forced restarts, hardware that can’t be configured easily… And it must have been Windows Vista, because of those annoying User Account Control prompts.

Right?

Wrong. I was installing Ubuntu Linux. I had never tried this distro before, and I had heard from commenters recently that it was extremely user-friendly. So I decided to take it out for a spin

Read the rest of this entry »