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back to article Sticky Tahr-fy pudding: Ubuntu 14.04 slickest Linux desktop ever

The final beta release of Ubuntu 14.04, due in April, is here. Code-named Trusty Tahr, 14.04 will be a Long Term Support release, meaning Canonical will support what you get in April for five years. The idea is it's a solid foundation for long-term development and planning by Canonical and users, particularly partners and …

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  1. 1Rafayal

    Head to head

    any chance of The Register doing a series of articles that compare and contrast Windows against a Linux?

    I think a lot of commentards here have an idea of what they like and dislike about the two OS's, however I think there are a good amount of people who simply not used a Linux before..

    27 6
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Head to head

      Windows wins. It is by far and a way the most stable and usable OS. Unlike Linux, Windows will run all your current software. The migration cost (and continuing support cost) of a Linux migration are eye-watering. And then there is the massive re-training all your users will need, and you'll have to explain command line to them - you can't avoid that with Linux.

      10 123
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        FAIL

        Re: Head to head

        Is that you, Satya?

        To borrow from Wikipedia, [citation needed]

        30 2
      2. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Head to head

        What's the migration cost of moving from XP to Windows 8?

        58 0
        1. Conor Turton
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          Re: Head to head

          "What's the migration cost of moving from XP to Windows 8?"

          A lot less than Windows to Linux as you're not going to have to change all your applications.

          10 67
          1. Anonymous Bullard
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            Re: Head to head

            What applications? browsers are cross-platform

            37 8
            1. dogged
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              Re: Head to head

              Except for IE; no linux browser will currently run ActiveX components (and quite rightly so). Although idiots who wrote in-house applications using ActiveX and IE are sadly not rare and those applications are now causing everyone a whole lot of grief.

              And not everything runs in a browser. That hideous spreadsheet your accounts department uses for reporting with the 28MB of VBA macros in it.... not gonna run, even with WINE.

              You know and I know it should never have been created but it was and it is and it's mission-critical now...

              Or the untold billions of in-house developments using VB or .NET Winforms or WPF that mono will simply never support.

              Migration can be a great a policy but it can also be a terrifyingly expensive and time-consuming policy.

              19 9
              1. I Am Spartacus
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                Megaphone

                Re: Head to head - Windoze upgrade

                Dogged makes the point that the 28Mb spreadhseet with VBA macros aint gonna run on Linux. Well, I have news for you - it can and does run under OpenOffice, and it was 3,000 MB. However, it was developed under Office 2003 using WinXP.

                It failed spectacularly on Office 2010 using Windows 7, and had to be rewritten.

                So, there you are - reality check says it is easier to upgrade to OpenOffice and Ubuntu than it is to Office 2010 and Windows 7. And it is also cheaper, as in FREE !

                31 1
                1. dogged
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                  Re: Head to head - Windoze upgrade

                  > Dogged makes the point that the 28Mb spreadhseet with VBA macros aint gonna run on Linux. Well, I have news for you - it can and does run under OpenOffice, and it was 3,000 MB. However, it was developed under Office 2003 using WinXP.

                  That's interesting. The (actually real) spreadsheet I was referring to has any number of MSGraph COM objects in it and crashes explosively under WINE and the VBA doesn't work at all under OpenOffice.

                  So, some will, some won't. But most of the homebrew line-of-business Windows applications absolutely won't run so my point stands.

                  3 8
                  1. tom dial Silver badge
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                    Re: Head to head - Windoze upgrade

                    It is an unfortunate truth that in some organizations there are a great many of these applications hiding in dark corners that were developed without IT department assistance (or documentation), were seen as useful by functional managers, some to the extent of becoming "mission critical", and ultimately abandoned by their developers/maintainers due to promotion, reassignment, or retirement. Following a major reorganization and recognition that Windows XP was sundowned, my previous employer identified more than 500 of these "microapps", with a lot of overlapping function and not a few errors.

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                2. aliterate
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                  Re: Head to head - Windoze upgrade

                  Similarly, I've had a number of occasions when I've helped someone with an old Word / Excel document that couldn't be opened in or was messed up by a new version of MS Office... by opening it in Open/Libre Office and saving it in the current version of MS Office.

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                3. Not That Andrew
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                  @I Am Spartacus Re: Head to head - Windoze upgrade

                  When your spredsheet is 3000Mb, surely you should be porting it over to a database, instead of faffing about wit OpenOffice and Office 2010?

                  3 0
              2. A J Stiles
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                Re: Head to head

                These are things you take into account at the time when you're migrating. What you probably need to do is take a step back and look at the bigger picture. And more importantly, concentrate on ends as opposed to means.

                A spreadsheet with loads of macros in it is -- in all probability -- a horrendous bodge, never mind how many people are trying to do things that way.

                Whatever is in the spreadsheet probably really belongs in a database; which naturally belongs on a centralised server in the office. And then you can replace all your convoluted macros with a few simple scripts in Perl, Python or your favourite language. Instead of e-mailing a huge spreadsheet around everyone and it quickly getting out of sync with reality, why not display it in a web browser, straight from the database server?

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                1. dogged
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                  @A J Stiles

                  I absolutely agree with you.

                  The problem is, this is owned by the Accounts department who see that a) what they have now works b) replacing it would cost money in developer time and analysis and c) they (as the Accounts department) would be paying.

                  The odds on sneaking any improvement past the beancounters are infinitesimal.

                  5 0
                  1. aliterate
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                    Re: @A J Stiles

                    >The odds on sneaking any improvement past the beancounters are infinitesimal.

                    True. In a way.

                    But isn't an important definition of 'important', important to the users?

                    (Rather than to the techies who might have different goals / wishes / criteria which might not coincide with, and shouldn't necessarily / always override those of the users).

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              3. tom dial Silver badge
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                Re: Head to head

                I always thought of ActiveX as a vulnerability to be avoided wherever and whenever possible.

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              4. Edward Groenendaal
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                Re: Head to head

                I tried migrating my old companies 40 XP desktops to Ubuntu using LTSP fat clients. It actually went rather well. I had to put a finance computer back onto Windows due to a spreadsheet, Libra Office couldn't cope, and also interfacing with government systems that insist on Windows.

                However, everyone else was happy. All apps were there, all company ones are web apps.

                The approach I took was to initially use a windows skin on a plain desktop. So that it looked identical to XP.

                Then with 12.04, I went Unity. They handled it fine.

                At no point has anyone needed the command line, and being LTSP it is trivial to manage.

                Cheers Ed.

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            2. chekri
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              Re: Head to head

              Yes they are - and name a sizable corporation that only uses browsers.

              2 2
              1. Anonymous Coward
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                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Head to head

                Yes they are - and name a sizable corporation that only uses browsers.

                The company I work for (global, presence in every country you can name, the "Microsoft" of our industry), stipulates that every user interface that we make is web-based (where feasible - there are edge cases).

                8 1
              2. aliterate
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                Re: Head to head

                >Yes they are - and name a sizable corporation that only uses browsers.

                Name a sizable corporation that only uses *any* particular <type of application | software>.

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              3. Anonymous Coward
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                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Head to head

                The UK MOD is trying to, as rapidly as possible, shift as many of its staff (Military and Civil Servants) into the G-Cloud - PCs will become, effectively, dumb terminals, all documents accessed via the browser, no local copies held by the machine. The plan is that eventually - even if you find a 'misplaced' Gov't laptop all you find is just enough password protected OS to make it boot into a password protected browser log on.

                I work in the Sim side and the plan to virtualise many of our simulations is gaining traction.

                Lots of MOD machines still run XP and while the roll-out of Win7 is going on a pace (at least it's faster than the NHS), the MOD has also been tasked to pay considerable attention to Open Source and Open Standards and if that pressure continues there might not be a jump to Win8/9/10 if a light Linux client will do the job...

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                1. tom dial Silver badge
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                  Re: Head to head

                  The US DoD (at least theoretically) does not allow computers with unsupported operating systems to be attached to any network. I retired from there a couple of years ago and don't know how things are going now, but at the end of 2011 there appeared to e reason for concern.

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              4. Edward Groenendaal
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                Re: Head to head

                Cisco Systems.

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          2. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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            Re: Head to head

            "A lot less than Windows to Linux as you're not going to have to change all your applications."

            My main applications are IDEs, compilers, text editors (code plus LaTeX), MatLab and Mathematica (apart from the browser). All of them available in Linux. The odd MS-Office document I get opens well enough in LibreOffice. In our department people use Windows (7), Mac OS-X and Linux (Ubuntu) roughly equally. I myself have used all three. Despite my earlier struggles with windows versions, I quite like Win 7. For most of my work I prefer Linux.

            Just goes to show: OS wars are SO last century

            65 2
            1. Anonymous Coward
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              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Head to head

              Just goes to show: OS wars are SO last century

              I've been using Windows since, er, DOS. When I moved to Linux, the year before last, all of my Windows software was either cross-platform, or there were viable alternatives (some better, some not). And I'm a .NET developer (glad to be shot of Visual Studio!).

              The OS is just another interchangeable tool. It's becoming more and more irrelevant, and even Microsoft have known that for a while (Office on iPad, no new major controls since XP, WinForms (and WPF) in maintenance mode).

              Unfortunately, their customers do not believe it yet.

              15 2
              1. dogged
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                Re: Head to head

                > And I'm a .NET developer (glad to be shot of Visual Studio!).

                What are you using instead?

                (Personally, I quite like VS, post VS2010 which was crashy and irritating).

                1 3
                1. Anonymous Coward
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                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Head to head

                  What are you using instead?

                  MonoDevelop for C#, WebStorm for front-end.

                  (Personally, I quite like VS, post VS2010 which was crashy and irritating).

                  I used to love VS. VS2012 encouraged me to look elsewhere.

                  6 0
                  1. Kubla Cant
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                    Re: Head to head

                    I used to love VS. VS2012 encouraged me to look elsewhere.

                    I'm mostly a Java developer, but I've been using VS 2010 for the past six months. I can't believe it. It has fewer features than Eclipse and IntelliJ had 10 years ago. It seems you have to buy some kind of add-on to do anything but the most rudimentary refactoring.

                    What do all these year suffixes signify? The only IDE I can imagine that's more primitive than VS 2010 is the Visual Studio 6 I used in the last century.

                    7 1
                    1. Anonymous Bullard
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                      Re: Head to head

                      What do all these year suffixes signify?

                      So it's obvious how old your version is

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                2. Dave 126 Silver badge
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                  Re: Head to head

                  >Just goes to show: OS wars are SO last century

                  Yep.

                  Ultimately, an OS by itself is of little use to anybody. For most people the OS is just that thing that lets them run the software that they use. Increasingly, the software that most people use is either available for most platforms, or can run in a browser. However, there will be many who use software that isn't available for some OSs, and the whole idea of OS 'choice' is for them meaningless. Its a chicken and egg situation - why bother developing your $0000 software for a platform that currently has very little market share, if your customers can easily afford a Windows licence?

                  Things are changing, but it is a long road.

                  Some people are having a bit of headache migrating from XP to newer versions of Windows (so may as well investigate Linux) - lots of custom worksheets plugged into an old accounts package, for example. In another workplace I know, where most staff are just entering data, the switch to Linux was pretty straightforward and cost-effective- a no-brainer.

                  8 1
                  1. aliterate
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                    Re: Head to head

                    >Ultimately, an OS by itself is of little use to anybody.

                    A bit like an application, a lump of hardware, a mains power supply, a road, a car, a ...

                    Funny how many things need other things to be of use.

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          3. JEDIDIAH
            Reply Icon
            Devil

            Re: Head to head

            >> "What's the migration cost of moving from XP to Windows 8?"

            >

            > A lot less than Windows to Linux as you're not going to have to change all your applications.

            Nope. The migration from XP to Win8 will also create a lot of application level churn and might even cause MORE disruption than a migration to Linux.

            That's Microsoft's dirty little secret.

            9 1
          4. W. Anderson
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            idiotic and ignorant comment from Microsoft shills.

            This commenter "Connor..." and 'Anonymous Coward' above him/her are particularly ignorant and obviously stupid about any Windows XP to Linux migration efforts, since every "real world" migration done so far by several countries and municipalities in Europe and South America, as well as detailed evaluations of such migrations by Merrill Lynch division of Chase Band have shown significantly less costs on the XP-linux than XP-Wint/8 migration.

            When one of these doodfus people mention "your applications", they are usually referring to Microsoft Office specifically. Since LibreOffice, OpenOfice and other suites have proven more than capable and compatible for these afore mentioned migrations - about 90% to non-Office and 9% MS Office retained, there is no loss of productivity or performance. Likewise, Merrill Lynch performed a study which showed that average MS Office business user had very little migration issues - time and/or effort in learning LibreOffice to very productive degree - about 15 minutes, with proper instruction.

            Many commenters on the Register, ZDNet and other media who have shown strong and illogical Microsoft bias are unfortunately the majority of ill-informed, technologically simple minded and backward thinking individuals to comment in any media.

            10 1
        2. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Head to head

          "What's the migration cost of moving from XP to Windows 8?"

          What migration? Do you really think people will stop using Windows XP after April 8th?

          It's all FUD! To make money, to sell new computers, to make the richest bloke on the planet even richer!

          If people want to keep using XP let them. Don't push, force or lure these folk into new stuff. Some of these users are too old and can't cope with so much change or don't give a fuck about computers and therefore only use them for mundane tasks. Windows XP is still fine for those people so why bother? As long as they have a decent browser (like Mozilla Firefox 27.x.x), upto-date java (Java 7v 51) and flashplayer (v12) and uptodate antivirus-software (03/2014) what's all the fuzz about! The people who are really into computers have already moved on to Windows 8.x, Ubuntu 12 or 13, or whatever.

          Stop parroting all those bloody scare-mongers, for god's sake!

          6 0
        3. JEDIDIAH
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          Linux

          Re: Head to head

          > What's the migration cost of moving from XP to Windows 8?

          It's the costs associated with lots of hardware being thrown against the nearest wall as end users rebel in frustration.

          7 1
        4. jelabarre59
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          Re: Head to head

          > What's the migration cost of moving from XP to Windows 8?

          Considering there's a lot of machines that ran XP but can't run Win8. a *LOT* of cash. Moving to Win8 will require ALL new hardware in those cases.

          4 0
      3. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Head to head @AC

        I see the Redmond reputation management squad are on day release.

        63 4
      4. Baron Ebaneezer Wanktrollop III
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        Re: Head to head

        I've been using OS's since DOS - especially all the Windows variants. When I sat down at a Win8 desktop I had to retrain myself on how to do the most basic of functions - so I thought bollocks, why on earth should I have to 'learn' how to use this POS OS.

        So I have given Win8 and it's maker the middle finger. Nice knowing you. Clueless morons.

        63 2
        1. tabman
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          Flame

          Re: Head to head

          3 days ago Baron Ebaneezer Wanktrollop III wrote: When I sat down at a Win8 desktop I had to retrain myself on how to do the most basic of functions

          I call total utter bo**cks. Did you not understand that pressing Win key +D gets you to the desktop?

          Maybe you didn't know that there were freely available low cost (£5) or free start menu replacements available from pretty much day one?

          Maybe you're just a lonely troll?

          Who knows.

          0 4
      5. Chemist
        Reply Icon
        Linux

        Re: Head to head

        "Windows will run all your current software"

        It won't run any of mine unless you mean Windows versions of Firefox, Opera, GoogleEarth, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and The Gimp, VLC, Skype - mind that's quite a lot really, about 25% of the programs I use.

        I'm only missing (snigger) IE, Office

        41 1
        1. ragnar
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          Re: Head to head

          I've been running Office 2013 successfully in CrossOver Office. Surprisingly easy - more or less a one click and watch the installer do all the hard work.

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          1. P. Lee
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            Re: Head to head

            Nice. But legal?

            Any dlls brought across from a windows installation?

            0 0
        2. Oninoshiko
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          WTF?

          Re: Head to head

          It won't run any of mine unless you mean Windows versions of Firefox, Opera, GoogleEarth, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and The Gimp, VLC, Skype - mind that's quite a lot really, about 25% of the programs I use.

          So, it will will run all your current software then?

          2 4
          1. Chemist
            Reply Icon

            Re: Head to head

            "So, it will will run all your current software then?"

            Just to clarify : Linux runs all the software I currently use. I don't have a Windows computer - indeed only 1 of my 7 computers has ever had Windows installed. My latest laptop (4-core i7/8GB) was bought new recently free of an OS

            About 25% of the programs I use ( those listed) are also available for Windows. This is a kind of a tortuous way of saying that if the programs listed are the ones you mostly use then you could be running them under Linux rather than WIndows

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      6. Amorous Cowherder
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        Facepalm

        Re: Head to head

        Don't you have a bridge to skulk under somewhere?

        4 0
      7. A J Stiles
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        Re: Head to head

        You keep parrotting the argument that "you have to use the command line", which has all the hallmarks of superstition about it; as though somehow there was something wrong with that.

        Seriously, what is so bad about the command line?

        For me, the command line is simply a way of issuing a precise command straight to the computer, in a way that does not depend on the user's personal configuration options. In answering a question asked by a user, I can write "Open a terminal window and paste in the following:" and be confident that it will Just Work.

        If I had to describe the process of clicking through various icons and menus, it probably would break if the user had altered their configuration from the default as shipped. It would also take a lot longer to describe the process.

        Why do you think there is a difference between entering a quick textual command without making any pretence of understanding it, and making a long series of mouse clicks without making any pretence of understanding it?

        50 3
        1. tfewster
          Reply Icon

          re: command line (@ A J Stiles)

          What, use the command line, like in Windows? Where most support conversations go "Click Start, type <command> and press enter?" e.g. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/i-cant-start-the-microsoft-security-essentials-service

          Shame Windows doesn't have command-line editing to allow you to fix typos. Or leave a window open to check what you might have done wrong, let alone show you the error message. Simply repeat the entire process, correctly this time.

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          1. Kubla Cant
            Reply Icon
            WTF?

            Re: re: command line (@ A J Stiles)

            Shame Windows doesn't have command-line editing to allow you to fix typos.

            What version of Windows are you using? Even DOS had command-line editing.

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            1. aliterate
              Reply Icon

              Re: re: command line (@ A J Stiles)

              >>Shame Windows doesn't have command-line editing to allow you to fix typos.

              >What version of Windows are you using? Even DOS had command-line editing.

              Even DOS? Or only DOS?

              Isn't the only part of 'Windows' that lets you use the command line, essentially, DOS (in a window).

              Nothing wrong with that, of course.

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          2. Alan Esworthy
            Reply Icon
            WTF?

            Re: re: command line (@ A J Stiles)

            Now that's a surprising thing to read. What should be done, of course, is "Click Start, type cmd, then press enter". When the command window opens type <command>.

            Then you have an editable command line and a window that stays open. Did you not know that?

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