Ah Linux, a very powerful yet weak Operating System. I have been using Linux (mainly Ubuntu) for years now. But in May of 2009 I dove into a 100% Linux world. I had reformatted my hard drive and only had Linux Ubuntu 9.04 installed on the system (64-bit). Things were going great in the wonderful world of Linux. Then of course I ran into some bugs, but also some software compatibility with programs and lack there of. Linux had turned into an obsession for me to use as a main OS. It was a wonderful experience overall but here are some issues that I ran into.

Issue #1: Flash- Adobe Flash, in my opinion, has terrible support for anything and I hope it gets replaced soon seeing as support of anything for Linux seems to be half-assed. At the time Flash 64-bit support was virtually impossible to get working, though now it seems pretty stable. Still not up to par with what I could do on Windows or OS X. I like to stream about once a week but with Linux it was impossible as it seems Flash could not seem to get access to my webcam or my mic. Though very disappointed, I learned to live without it for months ( I do keep a partition of Windows for all of the problems I describe).

Issue #2: Web cam support- My web cam works very very well in Windows, but that is all do to one very important feature that Linux does not have access to yet by Logitech and for the most part all other hardware companies. This one very important feature, is the support of OEM drivers, without the driver the hardware will not act as it is supposed to. Thus the problem with the web cam will not be fully fixed without the support of OEM drivers.

Issue #3: Lack of skype support- Ugh this issue really makes me mad. Windows users have the Skype version 4.1 as Linux users have just now gotten 2.1, this makes for lack of user friendly features seen in 4.1 that are not there in 2.1 such as the voice conference and chat conference to be in the same window, this creates this issue of having multiple Skype windows open when I should only have one.

Issue #4: Pulse Audio- This is the worst audio implementation I have ever seen in an OS to date. It makes audio feel, look, and sound terrible. Just find another audio driver to use instead, I recommend using ALSA.

Issue #5: Gaming- Of course this a huge issue for me seeing as I am a hardcore PC gamer, I did not play games for months and that was very very hard. Yes of course I know I can install Wine, but Wine can only go so far with OpenGL games and you can just forget about Direct X 10. Not having games was pretty boring as the most interesting game I could find on Linux was Tux Kart Racer. Just was not up to par with playing Team Fortress 2 or Crysis.

Issue #6- Lack of Commercial “Pro” applications- Ah yes a very big problem in the world of Linux, although alternatives there are just not up to par with the commercial apps of todays world. In Windows I use apps such as Camtasia and Sony Vegas Pro. In Linux my substitutes are GTK-recordmydesktop and Kdenlive, though good apps, just not up to par with the pro apps. Also you can kiss goodbye using Photoshop (I really do hate GIMP).

Now these were just a few of the reasons of why I cannot FULLY switch to using Linux 100% percent of the time. I can safely say that I remain in Linux 75% percent of the time I am on the computer and on Windows 25% of the time. I hope you enjoy the list, and if you have any questions about using Ubuntu Linux just post a comment or send me an email at anoxiatech@gmail.com. I hope you guys enjoyed reading this and be sure to prepare your self for the the next blog: “When receiving more compensation will I continue to go Open Source?”. Stay tuned for more videos and blogs!
-Adam

Tags: anoxiatech, geeks, linux, ubuntu, youtube

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Comment by Knightjp on September 23, 2009 at 4:15am: I have a box in my place that runs Ubuntu 9.04 too.
My mac is the my main computer. I used to use Ubuntu as the main computer, but soon got tired of the constant updates and lack of being able to use mainsteam apps.
Yeah, its sad that Linux versions of software does not work well or have the same features. It seems like they're trying to ignore it completely.
Perhaps its because Linux is so openly available to developers and mostly developers use it, it must be much easier to just post the source code somewhere and have someone tweak his own version.
They don't cater to users who aren't that well versed with programming languages or have basic knowledge of computers

Comment by Adam Radcliffe on September 20, 2009 at 4:22pm: Thanks guys for all of the comments

Comment by JS on September 18, 2009 at 2:11pm: All valid points except Flash.

Flash sucks on all platforms (but especially on Linux and Mac).

Comment by Adam Radcliffe on September 18, 2009 at 2:09pm: We should start arguing about what we can do, but also, how can we make people jealous of us? How can we make other users want what we have?

Comment by Geos on September 18, 2009 at 1:55pm: Adam,
All valid points.
I think the question is 'Why are you using linux?' . What I mean is that Linux is never going to be a replacement for Windows and I don't think we (the linux community) will ever win the 'MS versus Linux' debate as they fill different niches.
Maybe we need to look at it from a different perspective... What are the things that I can do on Linux that I can't on Windows..... What more accessibility do I have to my system on Linux when compared to Windows etc etc....

While MS has the market share that it does we will never see the 'PRO' type applications and games support. There just isn't a commercial reason for those companies supplying to switch to and/or support Linux.

I think that a lot of the issues that linux apps/support has will be dealt with but not on the same timeframe as the windows equivalents (your Skype comments illustrate this..).

But your comments are correct, but what do we do?

Comment by Adam Radcliffe on September 18, 2009 at 1:33pm: Thanks for the comments guys, Dilyn I do agree that Gimp is an excellent replacement. Daverix I boot into 7 to play all my games :D

Comment by Daverix on September 18, 2009 at 1:21pm: #1, tried the 64bit flash 10 alpha from adobe? http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html It works fine for me but I have to disable compiz to get hardware acceleration when I want to watch movies and such. It's probably still faster under windows but this latest flash works pretty well anyway.

My web cam doesn't work either so when I want to use it, I start up Virtualbox with windows xp in a few seconds (by saving the state of the virtual machine). I'm also running Visual Studio and some simple games there.

When I want to play real demanding games, I reboot to windows xp 64bit. But that doesn't happen very often as I like to code more than game ;-) Have been using Ubuntu for three years now as my main os and feel very restricted when I go back to windows, probably because I'm so used with the applications under Ubuntu. :)

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