Is Ubuntu The Defacto Windows 7 Alternative?

I enjoy U/K/X-buntu…but if it wasn’t all the open source issues with codecs & such as that which I use on Windows systems…you would more of an adoption. Even though Mint supplies all of these…why should I even be concerned if my codecs are legal in my country or not? This should have been a non-issue years ago & now…but it’s not. Everyone should get fairly compensated…but when a Linux machine is either breaking the law or can not play whatever file you need…this is a giant problem.

I tried Linux several times with several distros. The problems I had were the following: Some didn’t install at all; they crashed on installation and were irrecoverable. Some installed well but could not get all the drivers I needed for my hardware. Some installed well, had all the drivers and everything was perfect, but I could not figure out how to connect to the Internet. With some others I could get connected to the Internet, but the settings would not stick: I had to reconfigure it every time I launched the browser. Another problem was that the program installation method was a mystery and I could not install or uninstall programs. Then there was the issue of the keyboard definitions: I could not find a way of making keyboard layouts for writing in a foreign language. Applications for office productivity were few and rudimentary. They were not Unicode capable. Every try would take a lot of time, many, many hours, many days, I was wasting my life away trying to figure out Linux, get drivers, make it work in general. I doubt many people have dedicated as much time to Linux as I have. I tried almost every distro available at the time: Caldera, Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Free BSD, Corel Debian, the Corel Office; you name it, I tried it. Besides, most of them were too slow. Finally, I gave up.

Is Linux still that way? I am afraid to try again. At my age (63), I cannot afford to waste large amounts of time. Now I have a couple of PCs, one with WIndows XP and another with Vista, and a Mac with 10.6 (Snow Leopard). At work I have Windows XP.

The Mac is good, it is easy to install and uninstall programs (just copy or delete them) and is fast, but it has a lame design that keeps the menu up on top isolated from the window, instead of having the menu attached to its window.

I also loved OS/2 Warp, but again, it was too slow and I could not find applications to run on it, drivers for my hardware, etc.

Windows is “bad”, it has lots of problems, but there are lots of applications to run on it, even free applications, atomic clocks, etc. I could not find an atomic clock for the Mac. Microsoft has a free utility to create keyboard layouts, everybody writes software for it, the best versions of most software are for Windows, etc. The way things are at this point in time, I am most comfortable with Windows.

@Sarkis Baltayian:

Quoting from the new Mac vs PC ads: “It’s better now, trust me.” But, Linux really IS better now, at least on Mint and Ubuntu. I have no problems with keyboard layouts, and keeping the layout just means leaving it in your .bashrc and xorg configuration files to activate at login, if the wizards don’t work right. The Menubar on the Mac is not lame - it’s handy to have a program ‘run without running’ - it’s probably designed like that because it came from California, where the hippies are :P. But, I’m a computer user who basically just wants music composing, code-writing, literature writing tools, so my demands of a computer are low. I’m a person who wants a pocket-calculator to be my own personal printshop and editor, and nothing more. I don’t care about graphics, big screens, colored screens, the latest processor, a lot of disk space, the funkiest and freshest hardware, or anything of the sort. I’m happy with my 1980s-inspired Magick Typewriter, and you are happy with your multimedia hub that can replicate the whole universe with the touch of the rainbow key on the far right of the keyboard.

I agree with most of the “complaints?” so far, and also disagree with some of them.
I have tried various distro’s over the years and always ended up going back to Windows.
In most cases, there hasn’t been a problem with finding necessary programs to use, as I just look up the forums to see what people recommend. So cudo’s to that side of things.
Codecs, again, in most cases can be found reasonably easy.
Drivers, while most are covered, there are still a few stubborn manufacturers that won’t comply.
Internet and/or networking can still be a huge dilemma.
knowledge bases could be more coherrent. There appears to be too many links to plow through to find one fix. also the info tends to be not instructive enough, and in some cases, tend to be too informative, leading to confusion.
As for learning a Distro in one day? I tend to disagree. Yes, there are a lot of similarities to the good ol’ Windows, such as menu structures etc, but it’s the in-depth setting up of things such as .deb’s etc that can be putting off.

So to sum up, no, I personally wouldn’t use a linux distro as my main computer. I don’t expect Linux to be a windows clone, but I do expect it to be easier to learn and set up.
I am definately upgrading to Win7. A few new learning curves there, but still a lot easier than Linux.
Sorry Linux freaks.

If Linux wants to take over the desktop then someone has to convince the game companies to produce games to run natively in Linux and not through some 3rd party shell which affects game performance. Quite frankly I’d move in a heartbeat if I could buy games for it and I think a lot of gamers would. What keeps windows alive in the home is gaming.

As an OpenSUSE user I view it (vice Ubuntu) as a Windows 7 alternative, but I’ve always been a contrarian… :-)

As an Linux (Ubuntu, specifically) user, I have to say that it’s all I use when I can. I am getting a laptop for Christmas, and though it has Win7 installed, I’m going to have to use that 250GB HDD for something, likely something Slackware based this time.

The ONLY problem I’ve ever had is drivers, specifically Wifi. I had trouble with an onboard Broadcom card from an older Dell laptop, and I’m going to have trouble with the Broadcom on the laptop I’m going to get. Though various distros still have problems with my current Wifi card (a Netgear PCI), like Vector, but Ubuntu is perfect with it.

I mainly use my computers for small compiling jobs, so really, I don’t have a use for codecs and gaming finesse (though I admit both are lacking). I guess the bottom line is: Linux is and will always be friendly to developers (and various other denominations of advanced users), however, because of proprietary drivers and various other niches, it won’t always be as nice to home users.