Why can't Ubuntu <insert favorite distro> be more like <competing operating system>?

A bit of a rant, not really bashing Ubuntu or any other OS to be honest.

Well for my sins I always wonder why Ubuntu can't be more like OS X. I love OS X, I like the way the workflow feels and I find the interface an absolute doddle to use, but... I also love Ubuntu. Again I like the fact that I can do whatever the hell I want with it (even break it) and so long as I'm the superuser the system will let me! Fantastic, prat around end up with a brick. I, personally, can support that methodology. So why do I want Ubuntu to be more like OS X, traditionally thought of as the idiots OS?

A number of reasons as it turns out. None of which involve Finder, Dock or any other things most people associate with Apple's product. Language. It's the one thing everyone overlooks when it comes to their distro, it's something far more fundemental than the level of eye candy avaliable and it's something that is a royal pain in the backside to deal with. But fundementally, language, not eye candy, is the base of any user friendly operating system.

OS X makes three very vital assumptions in the language it uses. One: You, the user are NOT an idiot. Two: You, the user are NOT a uber-geek who understands dll's and hex dumps. Three: If the computer got it wrong, then its because the computer didn't understand you or was unable to comply with your instructions. At no point does OS X insinuate that you screwed up. I love that about OS X, everything from a program crash to a kernel panic is all the computers fault, because in reality, it IS the computers fault. It's a machine, it does as its told! And less of the backchat. Sit down and think about it, take the word illegal for example what does that conjour up in your mind? To my and a great many peoples minds it means breaking the law (obviously), doing something wrong, seriousness. It really doesn't matter if you say "this program performed an illegal operation" people scan read the scentance and usually end up with "program" and "illegal". So, the program broke the law? Which law? It's acurate in that the program did something the OS couldn't cope with, but inacurate as far as a users train of throught goes.

A really good example of this in Ubuntu (8.10) is when I install Amarok. Because it can't find the KDE sound handler (which I know but the vodka is preventing me from remembering... ARTS?) it crashes until you tell it to ignore that, uninstalled, sound handler. What, in the blue blazes would a none technical person think when they came face to face with that SIGDEV error box? It's utter gibberish from that stand point. Keep in mind Amarok is considered to be one of the best ipod handling devices and whilst there are others out there the Apple iPod is the number 1 selling mp3 player... so a user is more likley to be bolting one of those to their Ubuntu system than anything else. And by ipod I mean ipod with Apple OS not ipod + rockbox.

Is eye candy 'all that'? I would say... no. I have had plenty of people look at my Ubuntu desktop and say it looks pretty. I'm not running Compiz or anything else, just bog standard Ubuntu and my own wallpaper. Functionality sells. Easy of use sells. How pretty it looks when your using it is secondary and to be honest too much eye candy gets in the way of things. Really, does it matter if you see a cube when alt tabbing or window previews? Thought not. Again we can take notes from OS X on the amount of eye candy to present to people... despite the use of the GPU to do certain things (more in the up comming 10.6 release) the amount of acutal 'bling' the system carries is minor. The dock icons enlarge when you mouse over them, a little light turns on underneath every icon running in the dock and of course when you click on an icon in the dock it bounces to signify its starting up. But really what more do you notice? Well, you may or may not have noticed that the menu bar at the top is semi-transparent depending on the colour of the wallpaper it'd be covering (assuming QuartzExtreme is avaliable). But other than that and the minimize effect the total amount of eye candy pales by comparision to what Compiz can do when fully let loose... fire animations? Falling snow?

If eye candy isn't the reason why OS X is increasing in marketshare then what, exactly is? That's a tough one but fairly easy to figure out. Apple laptop works seemlessly with Apple backup device, mobile telephone/PDA, Apple Desktop and printer. Word about hassle free computing gets around... trust me on this one. Not only that it's the little things. The little things even a game like Fallout 3 can't get right that make the difference. Yes/No decision boxes shouldn't 'randomly' swap places, yes, I'm well aware that they only do in the game to make sure a change to the character isn't enacted without the player being aware of it... but the same goes for the OS itself. Take a look at a mac. EVERY standard application has the Yes/No boxes the same way, it has the exact same file selection box with changes the user made carrying over. All of the applications feel like mac applications because, allegedly, they've had one single person giving the OK on them. Steve Jobs, allegedly, for those wondering.

Here's something else to consider. Red Squiggles. Universally thought of as a misspelled word. Open TextEdit, Safari or even Firefox and you'll see they ALL plug in to the OS's dictionary. All of them check the spelling as you type and all of them spell in the language selected by the end user. THIS. The "it doesn't matter what I install it'll all speak the same language and correct me when I'm wrong" aspect is, to me, a writer and thus arty farty, a huge win to OS X. It honestly doesn't matter if I use OpenOffice of TextEdit. Color is still flagged as being incorrect (I'm English, it's spelt Colour for those of you in America).

I understand from the press releases and media news that Ubuntu is looking to employ developers to cover the eye candy. This is a loudable goal and I salute you for doing so, but perhaps, just perhaps, you should employ your own versions of Steve jobs. Someone with the power to say "that sucks, it doesn't go in this release" someone with the power to say "Yes, we're rewriting our whole i18n stack to be more user friendly" and have everyone follow it? Compiz lends itself to this example. It doesn't work with games running in Wine (or at least can cause issues) be they running in Wine or Cegeda. Why isn't Ubuntu going "Ok, Wine firing up, disabling ALL Compiz settings now. Loading application.... wine exiting restarting Compiz"? Hell fire it up in a totally seperate XServer instance and wire alt+tab up to swap between them if need be, whatever it takes to keep the 'no application will bring down the OS' and 'no application will freeze the disaply' stances. If someone has to hit the power button... that is a failure of the Operating System. As an addition to that why, when I insert a game CD/DVD in my Ubuntu desktop isn't it giving me the option to install via Wine as standard? Why isn't Ubuntu wine checking against 'the big list' of things that work/kind of work/work with additional dlls/don't work altogether and simply presenting me an option of 'get on with it'? Obviously with an option saying "Yes, I have a Windows license". Actually, where is this 'big list' of automagic installation detections and why isn't the current version of Wine on my Ubuntu install detecting it?

The other thing I would point out. Is something I have ranted about on my blog, so forgive me for treading water if you've seen this already. Graceful degredation. Install OS X on a low end mac and it won't, necessarily, perform all of the eye candy and effects that a high end macintosh will. Upgrade that low end mac with better graphics, maybe a CPU upgrade card (in the case of the old POWER architehture machines) and it'll start doing more. The user hasn't touched any settings. The user honestly doesn't care if Nvidia provide a closed source, binary blob for their driver. Seriously, I'm a geek and I just want 3D to work on my laptop from the outset... with the latest, stable driver. Scale down your requirements gracefully, Ubuntu. A Pentium 3 class processor, despite the 3D accelerator does not have the same raw power as a Core 2 Duo (or Quad). Factor in the results of lspci (or cat /proc/cpu) at RUN TIME and degrade (or upgrade) the users experience accordingly. Yes, this means that the desktop they see on a high end gaming machine should look and feel exactly the same as a Pentium 2 class processor. Yes, this means a whole truck load of work in various programs. Yes, this means getting Nvidia and AMD/ATi to sign deals... no users don't really care about binary blobs or what they mean. Honestly, they (and I) just want our graphics card to work out the box.

Brand dilution is also something to be keenly aware of. Ubuntu. Ubuntu Server. Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Ubuntu mobile. Moblin (which may, or may not be officially associated with Ubuntu but there you go as far as mind share is concerned) Ubuntu pig in a blanket, Ubuntu super hyper mega edition (I might have made up the last two). Would someone please explain to me why, an Ubuntu desktop install, can NOT recognise it is being installed on a Netbook class machine and configure itself accordingly? Here's a hint: 800x480 (ASUS EEE PC 701 default resolution, the 701 is one of THE biggest selling netbooks and remains so) 1024x600 (most other, 10" and above netbooks). Give me the option to do a netbook install or better yet if I've selected 'Auto' for everything, just install netbook-launcher and associated items without asking. The only machines to use those two resolutions are netbooks, I've never heard of an ancient CRT supporting 1024x600; 1024x768 yes, 800x600 yes. But not the two I mentioned. Seriously thought, how many versions of Windows Vista are there and which one do I, as a home user want? Ok, what about me as a SysAdmin? And now my users? Is that Home Basic, Home, Home Avanced, Business or Ultimate? But which one is the 'real' Microsoft Windows Vista? Never underestimate how easy it is to dilute your brand. OS X has two versions. OS X and OS X server. Both of which boot to a GUI it should be noted, just with some different tools.

This post brought to you by 1/2 bottle of Smirnoff black, a 'Hackintosh', Windows notepad..... and zero, zip, nadda, red squiggles.

SarahKH said:

OS X makes three very vital assumptions in the language it uses. One: You, the user are NOT an idiot. Two: You, the user are NOT a uber-geek who understands dll's and hex dumps. Three: If the computer got it wrong, then its because the computer didn't understand you or was unable to comply with your instructions. At no point does OS X insinuate that you screwed up. I love that about OS X, everything from a program crash to a kernel panic is all the computers fault, because in reality, it IS the computers fault. It's a machine, it does as its told! And less of the backchat. Sit down and think about it, take the word illegal for example what does that conjour up in your mind? To my and a great many peoples minds it means breaking the law (obviously), doing something wrong, seriousness. It really doesn't matter if you say "this program performed an illegal operation" people scan read the scentance and usually end up with "program" and "illegal". So, the program broke the law? Which law? It's acurate in that the program did something the OS couldn't cope with, but inacurate as far as a users train of throught goes. If the computer is just "a machine" that "does as its told", it must be the user's fault if something goes wrong. The goal should be to avoid all errors where the computer screws up and let the user have a bruised ego when they screw up.

SarahKH said:

A really good example of this in Ubuntu (8.10) is when I install Amarok. Because it can't find the KDE sound handler (which I know but the vodka is preventing me from remembering... ARTS?) it crashes until you tell it to ignore that, uninstalled, sound handler. What, in the blue blazes would a none technical person think when they came face to face with that SIGDEV error box? It's utter gibberish from that stand point. Keep in mind Amarok is considered to be one of the best ipod handling devices and whilst there are others out there the Apple iPod is the number 1 selling mp3 player... so a user is more likley to be bolting one of those to their Ubuntu system than anything else. And by ipod I mean ipod with Apple OS not ipod + rockbox. It's very difficult to convey meaningful technical information in an easy-to-understand error message. I'd be interested to see what you think a good model of this is.

SarahKH said:

If eye candy isn't the reason why OS X is increasing in marketshare then what, exactly is? That's a tough one but fairly easy to figure out. Apple laptop works seemlessly with Apple backup device, mobile telephone/PDA, Apple Desktop and printer. Word about hassle free computing gets around... trust me on this one. Not only that it's the little things. The little things even a game like Fallout 3 can't get right that make the difference. Yes/No decision boxes shouldn't 'randomly' swap places, yes, I'm well aware that they only do in the game to make sure a change to the character isn't enacted without the player being aware of it... but the same goes for the OS itself. Take a look at a mac. EVERY standard application has the Yes/No boxes the same way, it has the exact same file selection box with changes the user made carrying over. All of the applications feel like mac applications because, allegedly, they've had one single person giving the OK on them. Steve Jobs, allegedly, for those wondering. Apple has done well because they make their OS specifically for a narrow range of hardware, on which it is made to work well.

SarahKH said:

Here's something else to consider. Red Squiggles. Universally thought of as a misspelled word. Open TextEdit, Safari or even Firefox and you'll see they ALL plug in to the OS's dictionary. All of them check the spelling as you type and all of them spell in the language selected by the end user. THIS. The "it doesn't matter what I install it'll all speak the same language and correct me when I'm wrong" aspect is, to me, a writer and thus arty farty, a huge win to OS X. It honestly doesn't matter if I use OpenOffice of TextEdit. Color is still flagged as being incorrect (I'm English, it's spelt Colour for those of you in America). This is certainly possible with Linux or BSD. Aspell is already utilized by many apps and could be used by more.

SarahKH said:

The other thing I would point out. Is something I have ranted about on my blog, so forgive me for treading water if you've seen this already. Graceful degredation. Install OS X on a low end mac and it won't, necessarily, perform all of the eye candy and effects that a high end macintosh will. Upgrade that low end mac with better graphics, maybe a CPU upgrade card (in the case of the old POWER architehture machines) and it'll start doing more. The user hasn't touched any settings. The user honestly doesn't care if Nvidia provide a closed source, binary blob for their driver. Seriously, I'm a geek and I just want 3D to work on my laptop from the outset... with the latest, stable driver. Scale down your requirements gracefully, Ubuntu. A Pentium 3 class processor, despite the 3D accelerator does not have the same raw power as a Core 2 Duo (or Quad). Factor in the results of lspci (or cat /proc/cpu) at RUN TIME and degrade (or upgrade) the users experience accordingly. Yes, this means that the desktop they see on a high end gaming machine should look and feel exactly the same as a Pentium 2 class processor. Yes, this means a whole truck load of work in various programs. Yes, this means getting Nvidia and AMD/ATi to sign deals... no users don't really care about binary blobs or what they mean. Honestly, they (and I) just want our graphics card to work out the box. A good idea.

SarahKH said:

Brand dilution is also something to be keenly aware of. Ubuntu. Ubuntu Server. Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Ubuntu mobile. Moblin (which may, or may not be officially associated with Ubuntu but there you go as far as mind share is concerned) Ubuntu pig in a blanket, Ubuntu super hyper mega edition (I might have made up the last two). Would someone please explain to me why, an Ubuntu desktop install, can NOT recognise it is being installed on a Netbook class machine and configure itself accordingly? Here's a hint: 800x480 (ASUS EEE PC 701 default resolution, the 701 is one of THE biggest selling netbooks and remains so) 1024x600 (most other, 10" and above netbooks). Give me the option to do a netbook install or better yet if I've selected 'Auto' for everything, just install netbook-launcher and associated items without asking. The only machines to use those two resolutions are netbooks, I've never heard of an ancient CRT supporting 1024x600; 1024x768 yes, 800x600 yes. But not the two I mentioned. Seriously thought, how many versions of Windows Vista are there and which one do I, as a home user want? Ok, what about me as a SysAdmin? And now my users? Is that Home Basic, Home, Home Avanced, Business or Ultimate? But which one is the 'real' Microsoft Windows Vista? Never underestimate how easy it is to dilute your brand. OS X has two versions. OS X and OS X server. Both of which boot to a GUI it should be noted, just with some different tools.

I'm a bit confused by this complaint. Different versions only matter when they cost different sums of money and therefore have different levels of quality.

Overall, a well-written rant.

1) That was far too coherent to be written while drunk

2) That was posted around 5am GMT... that is one late night

3) I don't have time to respond point by point right now, but I agree with some of this and disagree with a little more. Mostly I feel you have compared stereotypes more than reality. But if I remember this thread tomorrow I'll respond more thoroughly.

yeah.. something a rant or 2 is good if it is nicely written.

UI, well, there are efforts to unify the overall look and feel, but linux and other open source software is still the work product of a loosely related group of hackers. a distro like ubuntu just put all the software together to work as a complete user desktop OS. the Xorg, Gnome, KDE, kernel and drivers are written by different groups of people with different priority and 'ego'. Microsoft and Apple could make the Vista and OS X styles beautiful and consistent because they have marketing teams and UI research teams to do those things. Open source software are almost pure done by software developers. The fact that linux is catching up with other commercial OS is already an achievement. Let just hope things will improve. Try to contribute in anyway possible; bug reports, forums, wiki edits will make linux a better OS. similarly for error handling, it is not easy especially when we don't have dedicated teams for testing the software. Users are unfortunately the ultimate 'white mice' for testing the software.

About branding, like u said, brand dilution could be a problem, but it is also a strong point in the open source community, for every piece of software, there are easily at least a few other alternatives. Of couse, each alternatives are slightly different in terms of features and stability. But if u really dont like a particular software, it is good to know there are alternatives but it does get confusing at times.

Color is still flagged as being incorrect (I'm English, it's spelt Colour for those of you in America).

I thought Brits spelt it with a u? Maybe that's the Smirnoff.

Good rant, you make some valid points. Of course, Compiz with all the fire and rain effects has to be chosen by the user; the default compiz configuration is more sparse like you said.

Y'know, I remember seeing a transparent gnome taskbar in the Intrepid release candidate, does anyone know what happened to that?

I have always said Linux should look hard and OS X and try to incorporate some of the features. Software installation is a big one.

jrusso2 said: Software installation is a big one.

Oh god, no. Apple is trying to find solutions to the truly massive amount of bloat caused by the "just drag the folder in" method of installing. That's part of what Snow Leopard is about. I'd rather have the extra gigabyte of space on my Aspire One's 8gb SSD, thank you very much.

Original poster: Why don't you try installing Mac OS X on an EeePC and see how far it gets?

3rdalbum said: Oh god, no. Apple is trying to find solutions to the truly massive amount of bloat caused by the "just drag the folder in" method of installing. That's part of what Snow Leopard is about. I'd rather have the extra gigabyte of space on my Aspire One's 8gb SSD, thank you very much.

Original poster: Why don't you try installing Mac OS X on an EeePC and see how far it gets?

That would be illegal.

jrusso2 said: That would be illegal.

That would be the point of the comment ;)

Well with Linux or UNIX the issue's you're talking about are rather simple to explain. First, no one person is in charge of GNU/Linux as a whole, and that was the whole point. Secondly, people mistakenly think that there should be some unity in the community, so that we can make one killer distro that trumps everything out there. Wrong idea to have. The variety in the systems is what provides so much security. Having different systems available also means that if one distro goes south, you always have another to fall back upon.

Further, if you want a distro that contains all of these things: Make it yourself. Everyone has their two cents to say, but these things are not easy, they take a ton of time, even more time in bug testing, and finally who the h**l is going to fork out the money for all of it??? GNU/Linux groups, and most UNIX groups do not have the same amount of money as Apple, and certainly not as much as Microsoft. We also do not have the same aims.

Apple is aimed at artists of varying types. Microsoft is aimed at home users and business professionals. GNU/Linux is aimed 'mostly' at IT and home users. UNIX/BSD/Solaris is aimed 'mostly' at IT and research groups.

The arguments you posed are good ones, but you have to understand the amount of money it would take to pay enough full time programmers to do all of it, the amount of time it would take, and the simple difficulty involved. Independent groups around the world, with wildly different programming styles have created the software that goes into GNU systems. Trying to unify their functionality and rid them all of every bug would be immensely troublesome.

If you really want it that bad. Do it yourself.

Repeat after me?

I am an individual.