I would say that while the user experience was bad with Linux netbooks, the constructors on their side did not pick their distribution wisely. The BIG names of Linux for user friendlyness and such did not enter the market until late (the first netbook with ubuntu preinstalled was released like what…1 month ago?)

Return rates for Linux FOUR TIMES that of XP devices[...]

That’s interesting, but not very useful without know what the actual rate is. If XP devices have a 0.1% return rate and Linux a 0.4% return rate, I’m not sure that’s a big deal.

However, if XP devices have a 10% return rate and Linux devices have a 40% return rate, that would be a huge deal.

Steve

Good point, but I think it is revealing that Tung says that retailers were “struggling” with return rates, so they must have been signifiant.

Also the key is not so much the actual numbers, but that after purchase Linux systems were being rejected at four times the rate of Windows systems. Quadrupling user dissatisfaction rates is major, whatever the figures are.

Good point, but I think it is revealing that Tung says that retailers were “struggling” with return rates, so they must have been signifiant.

There are two problems with that claim, though.

First, Tung, who works for MSI, was talking about a competitor’s product. Maybe that’s just his bias speaking. I wonder if he actually knows the product return numbers for ASUS (which, if true, they might want kept quiet).

Second, look at the full quotation again (with my emphasis add): “They were also only selling the only available product from ASUS, and sales were only okay, and they struggled with return rates, especially of Linux systems.”

So it sounds like ASUS was struggling with returns on both XP and Linux systems, just moreso with Linux. So maybe there was an expectation gap on the whole product, not just Linux.

Also the key is not so much the actual numbers, but that after purchase Linux systems were being rejected at four times the rate of Windows systems. Quadrupling user dissatisfaction rates is major, whatever the figures are.

Not true at all. If I sold a million units of XP and got only one returned and a million units of Linux and got only four returned, I think I’d be happy with both results. The four times difference would fall into statistical insignificance.

Yes, I’m probably exaggerating, but just to prove the point that you shouldn’t get alarmed without knowing the actual numbers. Otherwise it could just be statistical spin.

It’s like polls. If I told you 66% of voters favored McCain, that might be very interesting — until you found out that I only asked 3 people.

I’m not saying that your conclusion is wrong, of course. Maybe people don’t like Linux. I’m just not sure those quotations give us enough data to make that claim.

Steve

Linux is for geeks, allways has been, and still is.

Yes you can make it look like Windoze or MacOS, but it does not feel like it, as soon as you get beneath the surface of the desktop, you are lost, unless you are used to the Linux way.

We are not brainwashed by M$, we have been pampered by them.

If I want to download some thing for WinXP, I don’t need to know that it’s Windows version 5, 32 bit, I look for the version named XP, and after downloading I run the exe file, and the rest is taken care of by the OS. Try that in any Linux distro.

The name of the game is ease of use, not looks nor pricing, the end user will accept the looks of Win 3.1, at the prize of Vista, as long as it does not involve brain activity to use it.

@TOCA, your challenge to “Try that in any Linux distro” has been done. I run Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) on a Dell desktop. The desktop is an older Dell with a single core processor and used to run WinXPPro. I moved to Ubuntu when the box got slow with all the Windows so-called protections from virus checkers, adware blockers and finally, SP3.

Installation of Ubuntu was flawless, and even offered to have dual boot capability. Ubuntu has an update function. Invoke the updater, it knows what you have installed and looks for later distros of that software, downloads it and installs the updates, all automatically. As for new software, there is a pretty complete listing of software that is available for Linux included in the distribution. Click and install. It even checks to see if you have all the components necessary and advises you that if you want to run X, you also need Y. Again, click to install. I now run that box as the file server in my home network. It runs Samba so that my wife’s windows box can see it, and it connects to my iMac and windows laptop from work just fine. It’s actually much easier to connect from the iMac but I did finally get windows to admit that there was a network and that there was a server on that network. Talk about needing a geek, try networking under windows!

So, for ease of use, Linux is actually ahead of windows. The challenge for Linux is to get the idea that “Linux is for geeks” out of the brainwashed heads of potential users. Redmond has done a good job of marketing. Now if it would just concentrate as much time on building a stable OS…

@TOCA : You did not really try ubuntu did you? I find it simpler to install software on Linux for most of them. Unless it’s some totally unknown software developed by a couple of nerds, it’s very easy to install them.

Also I challenge you to update all your softwares at once on windows.

I’m sure that there are loads of people for which Open Office is an unacceptable replacement for MS Office, and perhaps there are iPod and Zune users out there who really want iTunes and Zune software as well.

@JakeRich:

The challenge for Linux is to get the idea that “Linux is for geeks” out of the brainwashed heads of potential users.

Do you really think that’s the challenge? Do you believe mainstream (non-geeky) people would even know what Linux is, much less say “it’s for geeks”?

I think if you asked most non-techies what Linux is, they’d have no clue.

@doogald:

I’m sure that there are loads of people for which Open Office is an unacceptable replacement for MS Office, and perhaps there are iPod and Zune users out there who really want iTunes and Zune software as well.

Heck, I suspect there are Windows Mobile users out there who want to sync with their PC. Does Linux have something like Outlook?

Steve

I have tryed Ubuntu, but got stuck when I wanted to install a driver for my GeForce Video card. The ones that Ubuntu suggested it self only gave me ultra wide screen ressolutions, and the ones I found my self gave me a max ress @ 640*480 or some other wide screen low ress options, rendering every thing useless, as I have a standard 1280*1024 screen, which did not react kindly to 1024*480.

I even did a fair deal of reading forums on how to get it sorted, but as Engrish is not my main lingo, I didn’t quite get all the techie stuff, about opening some special file in some program, which I had to download, in order to find the correct driver, and I’m a semi geek, making a living from knowing stuff about Computers, I’d like to see Joe Average tinkering with errors like that.

@Pony99CA
Heck, I suspect there are Windows Mobile users out there who want to sync with their PC. Does Linux have something like Outlook?

No but there is software out there making WinMob able to sync online with G-Mail, G-Calendar, Contacts etc. and even to sync with Mozilla programs.

@TOCA : That issue you had with your drivers, one could get the same issue on Windows. I dont remember being happy with the driver management on Windows, and I did mess around with it for some time. I also dont remember having to install any driver for my video card (Intel) after installing ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop.

Also keep in mind that the average Joe doesnt install Windows/Linux, he just buys a computer with an OS preinstalled on it.

@zelrik – While the tendency by mainstream consumers to buy a computer without worrying about the OS is not as common now as it was (Steve Ballmer would be the first to say that even bad publicity is good publicity, as most EVERYONE now knows that PCs run Windows), it still does happen. This I feel is mainly due to the fact that many nontechnical buyers just ASSUME that a new PC will run Windows. After all, one must really make an effort to find a desktop or mainstream notebook computer that runs Linux without a special order.

The fact that what these consumers assumed was Windows on their new netbook is in fact “this weird Linux stuff” may help account for all those returns

The fact that what these consumers assumed was Windows on their new netbook is in fact “this weird Linux stuff” may help account for all those returns

That would make sense, but how much different is the GUI from Windows? If the GUI is decent, and you use a netbook for mostly browsing, as long as you could spot the Back, Forward and Home buttons, you should be OK.

Even if you want to do more than browsing, if somebody can switch from a PC to a Mac, I suspect they could switch to a Linux GUI.

The biggest problems would probably occur if the user had to change some settings and the distro didn’t include a user-friendly Control Panel.

Steve

I think we also have to be fair here, while some people returned their Linux computer to the vendor and the windows netbooks dominating the market, quite a few people did buy Linux netbooks and kept it and I think it goes much further than just geeks.

@TOCA, as zelrik pointed out, the latest version of Ubuntu does an excellent job of finding and installing the proper drivers for everything in your machine. It even set the res of my monitor to the appropriate level, picking the highest res available to the monitor/vid card combo. And a friend reported that when he changed monitors that Ubuntu adjusted the resolution automatically when it detected the new monitor on the next reboot. (I can’t say I’ve seen that, since I haven’t changed monitors, but my friend is a reliable source–he refurbs old Suns, PCs, Macs and generic *nix boxes for charity.)

I have, and use, Open Office on Ubuntu and NeoOffice on Mac and both are as useful to me as M$ Office.

The real reason Windows is the “norm” is the licensing agreements that got MicroSoft into court–they charged PC manufacturers a fee per machine sold, even if that machine didn’t actually have Windows on it. Basically, the manufacturers paid to put windows on, then had to pay again to put any other commercial OS on. MS got the money in either case, so the manufacturers reasoned they might as well put Windows on EVERY box and leave it to you if you want something else.

So it’s not quality that got Windows everywhere, it was the monopolistic licensing agreements.

I don’t recall what version of Ubunt I used, but it was downloaded this spring, guess it was 8.xx?, and it most seartainly did not recognise neither my GeForce 7600GS card nor my 17″ Medion LCD monitor automatically.

Don’t worry though, I haven’t given up yet, I have an old Laptop in my kitchen, currently running Win ME, which I will try upgrading to Ubuntu, if I get a few days off durring the Christmass holydays ;)

And Open Office should be made the pre installed Office suit of choice for all consumer PC’s IMO :)

@JakeRich:

The real reason Windows is the “norm” is the licensing agreements that got MicroSoft into court–they charged PC manufacturers a fee per machine sold, even if that machine didn’t actually have Windows on it. Basically, the manufacturers paid to put windows on, then had to pay again to put any other commercial OS on. MS got the money in either case, so the manufacturers reasoned they might as well put Windows on EVERY box and leave it to you if you want something else.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think OEMs had to license using those terms. I think Microsoft just gave the best licensing rates to OEMs that chose that license.

So, from a business standpoint, it could still have been cheaper for OEM to use that license and pay a second OS license for the probably less-than-5% of customers who wanted it. For example, even if I only paid $1 less for using that license, the other software only cost $5 to license and my 5% figure is reasonable, I’d pay $95 less using the per-PC license for every hundred PCs sold (5 * $5 = $25 vs. 95 * $1 + 5 * $5 = $120).

I think it was a sleazy license, but if it wasn’t the only license available, some blame could go to the OEMs for using it.

Even if there was only that one license, I think that was for DOS (Reference), not Windows, and thus more or less irrelevant once Windows 95 came out.

OS/2 was a better OS than Windows 3.1, could run many Windows programs and had the backing of IBM, but even that wasn’t enough to overcome Windows.

Steve

The argument that Windows is an inferior OS which is only successful due to “evil” marketing campaigns and underhanded licensing agreements has gotten pretty tired.

First and foremost clever marketing and advantageous licensing agreements are simply good business. When did that become something bad or inately dishonest? As Steve pointed out, the OEMs had options, no one had a gun to their heads. Why is it that for years successes of companies like Google and Apple were due to how brilliant and visionary they were, and Microsoft’s successes were due to witchcraft, greed and stupidity. Accept it…Apple, Google and Microsoft are where they are because they have simply out executed their opponants, each in their own niches and in their own ways. You can not like the way Microsoft (or now Google) went about it, but 95% market share must mean they did SOMETHING right.

Does Windows have problems…sure. How could it not when it is so dominant that it has to be everything, to everyone, in 50,000+ different hardware configurations. However, for most users, Windows simply works and does what they want it to do. It is true that Linux may also be able to do what they need, maybe even better then Windows at least on netbooks, but they are familiar with IE, and Word and the way Windows works. From 3.1 to Vista, Windows has been developed as a CONSUMER OS, tweaked and structured to suit the way most people use their computers. Linux, like Unix before it, is an ENGINEERS OS. You need to know what you are doing to use it, there is just no way around it. For most Linux users, that is a good thing. The Linux is for Geeks tag wasn’t created by Microsoft, it was created by Linux users. For too many years the complexity and code heavy nature of Linux installation and configuration was viewed as a badge of pride, like building a tube radio from a radio shack kit. Part of the pleasure of Linux always seemed to be the accomplishment of making it all work from scratch. Tube radio kits are great if you are into that, but most people just go buy a transitor radio, not build one.

That is why Linux will never make major inroads in the consumer market. Most people don’t want to have to build their OS.

I go over to the Eeeusers forums a lot since I got my ASUS 901 XP and what I have noticed are that the Linux posts invovle a lot of How do I.. and Why can’t I… comments which when answered have very complicated solutions. The XP How do I.. Why can’t I… questions are usually answered fairly swiftly and can be fixed fairly easily with third-party programs or simple registry hacks.

This thread is a good example of what this topic is really about; http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=43720 (I’m 42! in that thread)

It isn’t suprising when the Xandros distro on the EEE line sucks so bad. They should have used Ubuntu + Netbook Remix. They’re making Linux look bad.