US woman says Ubuntu can't access internet

Linux makes your knob drop off.

A mate of mine - he installed Linux, right - and a couple of days later his knob dropped right off.

He called Dell to complain, but they just didn't want to know.

This is what they don't tell you on their so-called "web site".

True story - be warned.

Ubuntu - Dell - American wankers

I get so fed up reading comments from geeks with a working Linux machine, who reckon it's the only Operating System worth having and that it is easy to use and never crashes or gets any other problems.

Wankers is what I say.

Yes the woman in the article is a bit lame, so are many PC users, but so are you Linux commentards. Really !

I have been pissing in the wind with Linuxes like Ubuntu for several years now, ever hoping that this distro will do the biz on Microsoft, and I can finally leave all the shite behind, but no. It still doesn't cut it in many instances.

Including failing to recognise an NVidia graphics card so the screen resolution during the install wouldn't resize to something other than 800x600, so I couldn't read the dialogue boxes to complete the partitioning ! On that one machine.

No Linux distro will dual boot on my work horse 'cos it has External SATA and can't find the installed Grub once the installation is completed. PS don't go to the forums !

And another Ubuntu dual booting machine hosed the whole machine during a failed update using the package management tool supplied, Synaptic.

Also please be aware that if setting up a dual boot, and you choose import stuff from the Windows partition to use when you're in Ubuntu, you CAN hose your Windows system from inside Ubuntu, without any fucking warning.

So there Linux breath !

PS I have a BSc in Information Systems and have been pissing in the wind with personal computers since before 1995. And I don't see things getting better, rather the reverse. And just to stick the boot in to Open Source apps generally. Updating Firefox and Seamonkey on another Windows XP machine, two weeks ago, destroyed all the Bookmarks and stored passwords. Plus yesterdays use of Mozilla Backup on my work machine has wiped all the stored passwords in both Firefox and Seamonkey.

They all stink of American hype.

Happy shopping - Alfazed.

Seriously folks...

... the woman had a "moment" while traversing the - quite frightening for many - wilderness of buying consumer technology. I have known quite competent technical people - whose decades of experience have been with esoteric programing languages on prehistoric architectures - go into a blank spasm when trying to buy a PC and that is when the only options on hand were PC or Mac. Similarly I have seen young "ubergeeks" choke on their shandy trying to get their head around archaic but robust, capable - and therefore eminently appropriate - 8 bit control systems.

For the majority of people that - sadly for El Reg's revenue streams - do not surf this site, a computer is a computer, office is office, and what happens inside the box is a problem for the place that sold the thing. Not entirely different to most people's (including, no doubt, many Reg readers in this case) view of cars, lawnmowers, sewing machines, microwaves, typewriters, vending machines and so on and so forth.

I wouldn't even go so far as to blame Dell. You go into Ikea without knowing "the system" and you are likely to come out with something entirely unexpected and unassemblable - or meatballs. Likewise an unseasoned traveler to planet Dell can quite easily come out the other end with a box full of mystery and woe. I once came out with a complimentary printer. If you are at all familiar with Dell's low end ink jet printer range you will know what a terrible thing that is. Pray for meatballs.

The only crime here is the media beat up giving unnecessary oxygen to one person's panic attack and, probably not entirely accidentally, throwing that person to the wolves. A sensible voice would have probably counseled the woman to let it go and try to find some redress with Dell - perhaps with the assistance of her local consumer advocate. If she is genuine then she would probably be far better off, and if she is some crank after tv time she would be denied the privilege.

As for the local wolfpack, you are all very smart and your arguments are indisputable. Your personal choice of operating system is flawlessly correct and, as you have always suspected, it makes you irresistibly attractive to the opposite sex. Go get 'em, tiger!

Anonymous Coward because that is what I am.

Dumb users or dumb IT Folk?

Not so long ago I'd probably have thought this was a Linux problem, user problem, or a combination of both. However I've just helped my parents upgrade their computer and they have been thrown by a move from one windows version to another. It made me realise that not everyone is comfortable with concepts like an operating system and what it means to have a computer with a different operating system.

A lot (if not all) of the comments on here come from people in the IT industry and so phrases like "Operating System" do do phase us. However we seem to be generally blind to the plight of the non techie and that is a failing of our industry as much as, if not more than, any failing on the part of a user of our products.

In an ideal world the sales man at Dell would have quizzed her at length about her intentions but he is on commission and does not have the time. Her course supervisor might have advised her of minimum requirements of a machine needed to follow the course work, actually I suspect these probably exist and that Ubuntu and OO meet those standards. Her ISP might even have provided drivers for her hardware, I find it strange that there is some restriction actually but perhaps she has a USB modem or something similar.

public bool loserCheck($OS_you_use)

Haha what you say now Linux freetards??!?! It just can't compete - only virgins and people who cry about computers like Linux.

I just made a gormless, grizzling noise at work at 8am

Though it reminds me of Virgin Media telling me that 'the internet doesn't work on linux' when I requested that they stop bloody throttling me.

@Dylan Bright

You're taking the piss out of her technological illiteracy by posting the same "joke" twice in 12 minutes?

LOL

open office

open office would work just as well as word in fact better. as to the collage needing it on word that is because there on a winblows network. so all she has to do is save in open office microsoft word format. long live the penquin.

PS not a ubuntu problem.

@Simon, Linux = fail

Actually, my experience of supporting XP and Vista is that right-click/repair connection does not solve the problem on a fairly frequent basis. More likely, there are more people around with the neccesary tech know-how to fix a Windows cock-up than a Linux one. Both are equally hard to solve if you have no knowledge, there are simply more people around with Windows knowledge.

And when it comes to stripping off unwanted software I'd far rather do it on a Linux box and know I've not left any poisoned DLLs around because of Windows' scatter-gun approach to file installation.

Ubuntu is about the best of the Linux distros for consumption by the general public. If anything I'd say this woman was **too stupid** or **too lazy** to get to grips with the computer and in all probability this has saved her from an epic fail at the college. Inbreeding, meh.

Useless Windows-only bloatware CD

It's very common to see Internet connection kits bundled with a CD that lead you to believe you have to install some useless Windows-only application to be able to use your modem, whereas, the Web Interface is more than sufficient.

Verizon should provide noob-proof documentation to set up your connection using a browser without having to install this probably unsecure bloatware.

I wouldn't be surprised if this whole article was in fact a PR stunt by M$ to prevent other PC manufacturer from following Dell's excellent move toward non Windows OS.

For everyone about to flame Simon...

Sorry chaps, but he's right. It doesn't matter how many times you claim Linux is ready for the big time, or repeat stories of your 101 year old granny using Ubuntu (and there's inevitably one of those every single time there's a story about Linux), it's just not as easy to use as Windows, and when something goes wrong it can be an absolute pain in the arse. I don't hate Linux or anything and I'd be quite happy to see a decent OS topple Windows, but that's just a fact. Sadly a lot of Linux fans suffer from this problem where they can't quite understand why delving into command lines and changing system files would be a problem, believing instead that it's just the user that is stupid.

Windows is, most of the time, an absolute no-brainer, but more importantly every mainstream software package out there will run. Don't forget that even novice users have almost certainly had some previous computer experience, and that experience is 99% certain to have been with Windows and Office.

@ AC 03:16

You mean MS released a new Windows version in the last 10 years?

Mine's the asbestos one.

pffft

On most laptops, Linux gets you online straight out of the box. 10yrs ago, that would have been impossible.

I would bet real money that Ubuntu comes with some Office-a-like package installed. The Woman's ISP should have reassured her that the installer thy gave her wasn't necessary. Dell could have pointed out the word-processor.

My girlfriend who yawns at the mention of computers is perfectly happy to switch between Linux, XP or Win7, barely registering the differences.

We may all laugh...

but the thing is that's the target audience for Linux if it's ever going to make the breakthrough into the mass market desktop. While it's probably safe to assume every-one reading The Reg knows a thing or two about computers and thinks Ubuntu is the dogs danglies, the average clueless punter still seems to struggle with the basics. These are the sort of people you see in Currys and PC World with a glazed expression on their faces as some spotty faced kid runs off his learned-by-rote spiel full of nice technical buzz words. These people believe what they're told by sales assistants, buy the nice shiny box, take it home, spend 2 hours plugging it in, then expect the internet to appear by magic even if they haven't switched their broadband on.

It's one area were MS has bent over backwards to make things as idiot-proof as possible, much to the annoyance of techies who don't need that sort of hand-holding, but it's worked for them and allowed them to dominate the market. Something Linux in general still has to grasp.

Idiocy filter

News at 10, completely clueless person prevented from accessing the internet, world protected.

In other news, clueless person has now installed windows and is currently joining a botnet near you...

Paris because its ok if she's clueless...

Re Linux=fail

I agree with Simon. Not only is Linux is too technical for most people when you ask for aadvice on a forum, say, its written in some weird language that looks a bit like English but makes no sense to most people. Agreed Windows is pretty pants too. This is at the heart of the problem with PCs, most people actually don't want a PC they want something that does Internet and Word / Excel plus runs games their mates send and plays media. That GM blokes commects acomapring computers with cars some time ago was pretty spot on (IIRC)

Anonymous cos I'm feeling fragile

Paris. Why not

Shame on you

This could be a mature woman that has little or no experience on a PC and just wants to get back into education - an admirable cause in my book. The fact that it called a Technical College is irrelevant as she may be doing a course in the humanities.

So she's not aware that PCs can have Windows/Linux/Mac OS. This is not surprising as there are still many people that do not use computers very often and Linux is barely mainstream, if at all.

It just goes to show how narrow-minded so called 'educated' people are.

Paris..she wouldn't know one Linux distro from another either.

Silver lining.

Oh so what if some American bint went on some half baked excuse of a TV station to whinge about an unutterably boring problem of her own making.

What I do like, is that when she complained to the Dell employee, rather than jumping at the chance to flog a Windows license, they advised her to stick with it.

Good on Dell, keep pushing Ubuntu. Raise the bar for all of us.

@Simon

Its only the same as it was 10 years ago if you haven't downloaded a new CD since then !

@AC

"Really, Linux isn't that hard... you may have to search online for some answers if you don't know how to do something"

That assumes that you can get online in the first place, which she says she couldn't. Maybe she couldn't figure out how to connect using her wireless adapter?

Linux still requires more effort to use than Windows. Microsoft pay a lot of money to people to design every aspect of Windows, from the UI to the user documentation to the underlying code itself. Linux relies mostly on unpaid volunteers to do this work. The documentation in it is varied, and a lot of it wouldn't be understood by your typical user. The UI is also different to Windows, which scares a lot of normal users as they just want what they're used to.

You all have to stop thinking like a savvy IT pro and start thinking like the person who has to call tech support to ask why their PC isn't turning on when the wall socket is turned off.

That said, with regards to Word, I don't know why she didn't just try to open the file anyway, since OpenOffice should be installed by default, as people have already said. Maybe she just tried to install Office and didn't have a Word file to try with it?

I'm disappointed in you lot

Oh wow, so someone who is blatantly not incredibly PC-savvy got confused by the differences in operating systems. And this makes her an idiot? The level of vitriol here just makes me sad for her and for all of us.

ubuntu is fail

I used it for a month or two after a hdd failure and figured I'd give it a whirl.

it was crap, want it to interface with your hardware? Sure no problem just edit files manually, compile this, install that add on, stand on your head, do the macarena and you might get limited functionality.

want that very same piece of hardware to interface with windpwns? sure, turn on machine with hardware installed, click on "next" and then click on "finish", functionality now at 100% (and that's under vista!)

I have no doubt that ubuntu is useful if you want to do incredibly technical things with it, but for general use every day normal computing its a giant pile of horse manure. You fanbois go back to sitting in ur darkened server rooms and cheese snacks.

@Simon (Sometimes trolls need to be fed)

As far as I'm aware, repair connection is basically an ipconfig /renew (or possibly an ipconfig /release followed by /renew)

I'm pretty certain that it doesn't modify or change permissions on any configuration files.

To be honest, the last time I edited a text file in Ubuntu was to change the grub menu order, not something many Windows users would ever do.

Regarding the article, I can't believe people still only have a broadband modem rather than routers (or that the have to use the shitty software that the ISP provides).

And two words, Open Office, we use it on our Windows machines, and several Uni's I know of use it. Saves & opens Office docs (inc Office 2007). It also renders old Word docs better than current versions of Word. The only thing I miss sometimes are the Macros, though this woman wouldn't ever use them.

@Simon

Windows Repair fixes all your problems!

Unless you happen to be dealing with a wireless network, Vista and a Belkin N Router, in which case contact the person who administrates your network.

Maybe they should have that as a new system error message for Windows 7 "Well, I made a half-assed attempt to fix your network but after switching the adaptor on and off I'm out of ideas. Over to you."

Callsic response

Internet not workign, connection down?

" you may have to search online for some answers if you don't know how to do something, but hopefully that's a skill that anyone at the 5th grade level or above possesses"

And anyone woth their salt realises that if your internet connection is down and you only have one pc......

Don't worry I had this eternal loop with a modem manufacturer 10 years ago...

My modem doesn't work....

Down load the updated drivers from...

My Modem doesn't work.

yes download the drivers from...

MY M.O.D.E.M DOOOOEEESSS NOOOOTTTT WOOOORRRRKKKK

Yes download the...Ohhhh. We'll send the drivers in the post....

And yes I've used Unbuntu. Ok, but not for me....Some nice features but many others just to rough around the edges...