Ulteo, The New 'World's Easiest Linux'

ggarron writes "Gael Duval, the creator of Mandrake and now fired from Mandriva, has created a new Linux distro, based on Ubuntu, and it claims to be the easiest Linux, and that it will redefine the Desktop philosophy."

Re:I bet he hasn't even tried Linspire

[QuantumG]

A market requires actual money to be changing hands. As such, RedHat, Novell and Linspire are about the only ones in "the market" of selling a distribution. Add Canonical if you want to talk about the support market.

On the other hand, the insane amount of fragmentation we've seen in the "screw you guys, I'm starting my own distro" space has nothing to do with market forces and everything to do with geek egos.

easy to use?

[Raphael]

Personally, I don't think many (if any) of us on /. are good judges of "easy to use" on computers. We're too involved in the technical end and know too much to judge what would be easy for someone without a lot of experience.

I agree. Also, it is difficult for anybody (including usability experts) to judge anything from a static screenshot, even if you can already have some hints by looking at the crowded menus or at the buttons available in the applications. It would be easier to comment on a movie (screencast). Or just by trying it or watching other users try it.

I have serious doubts about the usability of Ulteo when I look at the navigation on their web site [ulteo.com]. Just try accessing the items in the second-level menu bar and you should see the problem quickly: if you do not move your mouse exactly as the site designer expected, you will have a hard time selecting the item that you want. As an exercise, try selecting UlteOS/Screenshots or Docs/Documentation and see how frustrating it can be if you move your mouse a bit too far up or down. And this site is supposed to promote the "easiest Linux"?

Re:It is based on Kubuntu, not on Ubuntu

[Peregr1n]

I might be a reasonably good test bed. I recently installed Ubuntu on my home PC as my first taste of Linux. I find it easy enough to use once everything is set up, but the fact that I couldn't just click-and-install a wireless card driver just drew a blank look from me (why the hell should I need to edit config files and compile stuff for something so simple?) From my point of view, Ubuntu is pretty much there in terms of basic user friendliness and ease of use, it just needs more drivers and less applications when you first install it. There are some things I find a doddle and far easier than Windows - eg. installing updates - and some very basic things that continue to confuse me - eg. setting VLC as the default video player for all video files - which I'm sure I could figure out eventually but gave up after five minutes as it's not worth my time.

Re:Easy means impotent!

[jazir1979]

it's not hiding anything, and it's certainly not reprehensible.

linux doesn't need to be marketed to experts who know what they're doing -- because they'll choose linux anyway.

getting n00bs to start with baby steps is not a bad thing at all, and getting people who don't need or intend to ever stray from the GUI at all onto a free, secure OS is to be commended.

OS X hides it's unix internals far more than any of these "easy" linux distros. is that reprehensible too?

Re:Man you are a hoot.

[ajs318]

Having used both the VAX/VMS and Unix command lines, I know that there are better ones than MS-DOS. DOS really did a lot to tarnish the reputation of the command line.

Still, just try to do the equivalent of

$ for IMAGE in *.jpg; do THUMBNAIL="`basename $IMAGE .jpg`_mini.jpg"; convert -resize 200x200 $IMAGE $THUMBNAIL && echo "Shrunk $IMAGE giving $THUMBNAIL"; done

through a GUI and then tell me it's quicker or easier. (Let's say for argument's sake that there are a hundred, 4-megapixel .jpg images in the directory, which is about a full 256M memory card. In case it's not obvious, they are being shrunk down to no bigger than 200x200 and re-saved as oldfilename_mini.jpg.) The problem is that you CLI-bashers seem to want to maintain people in a permanent state of ignorance; when IMHO, most of them are perfectly capable of learning to type the above in an Xterm. If you'll excuse the vernacular, it's a shitload less dicking about.