On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 00:13 +0530, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
I think users who decide to install Linux on their systems do expect the fact that some things will be addressed differently.
True.
Also, I think you mean to say "post installation customization" and not maintenance -- I've never had the need to defrag or refresh my antivirus (I don't have one actually). A few months back, I would have conceded to the fact that with debian unstable you should keep up with the upgrades that come out almost every other day, but not anymore. I just managed to go almost 2-3 months without doing an apt-get update (ok, I was obsessed with it ;) ) and didn't notice the difference.
As we both know Linux filesystems dont need defragging or need any antivirus :P Anyway, the maintenance that I was talking about is tweaking stuff here and there. One real world problem that most people face with Linux is with high resolutions. My friend bought an LCD and when he installed Ubuntu, he couldn't get a resolution above 800x600. He had to manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get higher resolutions. And this *is* a common occurrence. Call it customization / tweaking / maintenance, its all the same to me.
Second problem that I have faced whilst using Linux as my desktop is that some HD videos weren't playing in any of the players - mplayer, xine, vlc etc... On windows the file was playing perfectly well. It took me a while to figure out the problem. I had to increase the memory buffer in xorg.conf. Once I did that, the files played perfectly :)
These are common problems. I dont install bleeding edge software on my system or experiment with a lot of hardware but I know for sure that there are many more such problems. The users or the vendors dont have the patience to solve such issues. They are not geeks.
I cannot comment on this since I haven't had a parallel windows installation for about 2 years now. But then, is this really _that_ common a problem as you're making it out to be? If yes then it's a reasonably big flaw.
Yes, when I distributed Ubuntu 6.06LTS CDs to my friends, a couple of them did face such issues.