Linux is just as easy to use as Windows

False. Ubuntu is easy to use relative to other distributions, but it’s not easier than Windows. Windows users are guaranteed to have all of their hardware work, with very few exceptions. In Linux hardware support has gotten better, but it’s not what it could be quite yet. A lot of devices are supported in odd ways such that you can use them, but not to their full potential. I can think of two good examples. Let’s take a look at these hardware support issues, then we’ll get into some other problems you might encounter if you switch.

Hardware Support Issues

The first one that comes to mind is a variety of ATI cards and how they act when using an OpenGL (3D accelerated) application. You’ll often see snippets of the windows behind it in between frames, or it will drop frames entirely making the video choppy. Those are just a few of the problems with ATI cards, but don’t get me wrong – many cards work flawlessly in Ubuntu. Sometimes the issues can be resolved by using a more updated, restricted driver from the manufacturer, but it didn’t fix the problem on my laptop which has an ATI Radeon xPress 200M integrated card.

Another example of how hardware is harnessed in odd ways is with most Broadcom wireless cards. You have to download a restricted driver which takes the firmware from the Windows driver and extracts it with a program called FWCutter. This allows Linux to access some of the features of the card, but they don’t all work right. You won’t be able to make an ad-hoc network, and your network speeds will be noticeably slower than if you were using a native driver.

I know I said two examples, but there’s actually a third. If you’re lucky and your integrated sound card works, it may not fully support all the ports. I can’t use my microphone, which sucks because when I Skype I’m forced to use the mic on my Creative Live Video IM Ultra webcam which quite frankly sucks.

So while hardware support has gotten better, it’s still not quite there yet. You’re also not likely to get support for Linux from your vendors or manufacturers unless they sold the computer to you with Linux on it. Dell and Pystar (among others) are two manufacturers who sell Linux desktops.

Software Issues

Bottom line here is most mainstream software doesn’t work on Linux. It’s an entirely different OS which means it needs to be compiled specially to work on it. OpenOffice (by Sun, now Oracle) is a very robust office suite which will allow you to open Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files (and others too) but don’t expect 100% compatibility. A lot of the advanced features in Microsoft Office don’t translate to OpenOffice. You can try Open Office on Windows before you make the switch to Linux by downloading it at http://www.openoffice.org/.

I might as well list the remainder of the issues with the most popular software before I move onto talking about Wine (the Windows Emulator):

• Skype has a Linux version, but some of the features are missing and it also requires that your hardware is working properly which it may not be.
• Google Video and some of their other features don’t work under Linux, which is ironic considering their commitment to the open source community.
• Most Java programs don’t work, or don’t work well unless you use Sun’s version of Java. Ubuntu doesn’t come with that because it doesn’t fall under the GPL (General Public License). You have to install that and make it the default JVM for your java apps to work. Eclipse is a great example of a Java program that doesn’t work on the default JVM. Switching the default JVM isn’t easy for most average users.

About Wine (WINdowsEmulator) EDIT: Wine IS NOT an emulator (of x86…)

Wine is a great piece of software, don’t get me wrong I love it and I use it often when I need to run a Windows app at near-native speed on Linux. That being said, wine is not something that beginners or average computer users are going to find easy to use. They’ll give up almost immediately because it’s just not made for the average Joe!

Another problem with Wine is that it doesn’t support everything; it can’t emulate Windows 100% so expect some bugs and incompatibilities. I was able to run DVDShrink among other programs though, so it’s pretty cool and well written.

Video Codecs

There are a lot of video codecs out there ready to be installed so you can play all your favorite videos in Linux, but you’re going to run into videos that you just can’t play period. The biggest example of this is the WMV format (Windows Media Video). There is a codec for it, but it still won’t play most of them, and unfortunately a lot of websites use WMV. The Apple video formats pose similar issues.

The Bottom Line

Ubuntu Linux is an awesome distribution. They push Linux as far as they can, and try to make it as user friendly as possible. It’s a great operating system for the power user that wants to learn how to use the command line interface, the ins and outs of the OS, how to edit configuration files, etc. It’s certainly usable out of the box on a compatible system by average users as well, but if the people you communicate with on a daily basis use Microsoft Office, you’re going to hit some inconveniences. You’ll also encounter a host of other issues that aren’t easily resolved. I encourage everyone to back up their computer and at least try dual booting it. Linux isn’t going away any time soon and it’d be a wise idea to start learning about it and getting involved in the community – even if that just means trying out new free and open source software.