This blog has moved!

After a terrible experience with Ubuntu 6 a few months ago (I struggled to even play MP3’s with it), I was reading rave reviews about the new Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn. In the market to build a Media Center PC, I figured I’d give MythTV and Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn a try, What a mistake that was.

Just a bit of background on me, I used Windows for years until I finally got fed up 2 and a half years ago and switched to Mac. I haven’t looked back since. I’ve been in the computer industry for years, and have administrated linux servers for years, So my knowledge of linux is pretty robust.

I recall seeing that Ubuntu was “Linux for Humans” or something along those lines, it is most certainly not. I struggled with Ubuntu from the first time I inserted the LiveCD until I gave up and decided to install Vista (Vista Media Center is another post though).

For the very beginning, the LiveCD wouldn’t boot, I got continuous block errors. Maybe I screwed up the burn process, So I burnt 3 different DVD’s at 3 different speeds, all the same result. Finally I downloaded the alternate installer which is pure command line (human right?).

Then it came time to detect what keyboard I’m using. Mac OS X asks me to hit the key next to my shift key on both sides of the keyboard, it’s straight forward and easy. Ubuntu? It felt like a 100 step process asking me different things about my keyboard, only to conclude I’m using a standard keyboard.

Finally, I’m in Ubuntu. Maybe things will go smoother from here.

Now it’s time to go find MythTV. That was fun, I gave up after 20 minutes of fighting with the download on their site and searched google for “Ubuntu MythTV”. I was brought to a site with step by step directions indicating I use terminal. Terminal? Humans? What? I use terminal in Mac all the time. I administer servers, so like anyone who does, I’m used to linux command line due to SSH. However, when I tell a non-tech savvy user to navigate to Terminal or Command Prompt, they have no idea what’s going on.

On Mac (ignoring FrontRow) to install a Media Center it’s as simple as downloading a DMG from iTheatre, CenterStage, or Media Central and running the installer. This is a painless process, and it just works.

Back to Ubuntu, once I finally run all of the apt-get’s to get MythTV installed, I have to finish setting up MythTV in a text-based Terminal.

Rewind a bit, I wanted to test to make sure my AVI’s on my mac HD would still play in Ubuntu, so I tracked down gStreamer (I think). gStreamer also had to be installed via apt-get because no one cares to make simple install packages for linux, ahh the advantage of open source right?

Once I finished installing gStreamer it played my AVI’s just fine. Back to MythTV.

Now in the MythTV UI, I’m greeted with a terrible port of the MCE2005 interface from Windows.. But hey, I Can make my own to look like AppleTV, no big deal.

I play around with MythTV a bit. I tried several different ways to get MythTV to read the video directory from my macHD and failed. I ended up using terminal to create a symlink in the directory where MythTV looks for videos (again, for humans? please.). This worked, I found my videos just fine. So I navigate to the video I want, go to click it and…. nothing happens. I try a different one, nothing. I restart and try again, nothing. I was able to play these videos fine in gStreamer, why can’t MythTV play them?

After fighting for about 2 hours with MythTV to play my AVI files, I saw it was using mplayer and ffmpeg, so I went to terminal in the regular desktop and tried to open it there. Thats when I find out, I don’t even have either mplayer or ffmpeg installed. Why couldn’t MythTV tell me this? So, yet again, I’m using apt-get to install ffmpeg/mplayer and the codec packs after searching google for how to get this to work on ubuntu.

Now I wanted to get HFS+ support on Ubuntu to read my Mac harddrive. I searched google, I had to do WHAT? RECOMPILE MY KERNEL?

Fine, Ubuntu wins.. I’ll reformat the hard drive. Then I try to re-skin MythTV, whoops. I messed up the skin, and some how I made MythTV crash on launch. No problem right? Wrong. I spent the next 3 hours deleting every aspect of the skin I created, and the cache mythtv created. That was a terrible idea. Instead of reverting back to the default skin after it couldn’t find my skin, like a normal problem on a real operating system would do, it just crashed. After about 3 hours, I recalled the MythTV had to use MySQL to store its preferences, really, MySQL? How many regular users on OS X and XP/Vista know what MySQL is? Or even have it installed?

So I launch up phpMyAdmin and clear the MythTV database.. oh.. oh that was a terrible idea. You see, on Mac when you clear your preference files, the program just regenerates the default ones, not MythTV. I had to search google to find out I had to navigate to the SQL file and run the queries.. WHAT? Are you kidding me? This is what a human OS makes me do? I’m a Web Developer, so for me, no big deal.

That however, was the last straw for me. I could tell, I was going to fighting with Ubuntu until I gave up. It was a regular x86 box, not a Mac so I didn’t want to use Mac illegally and not be able to install updates and worry about drivers. I decided to use Vista Home Premium with Media Center, and that was the best idea I had with this whole project. The Vista Media Center is going to be another blog post though, all I have to say is, Wow.

Back to Ubuntu. What I found with Ubuntu was a very unpolished operating system. An OS that was terribly ugly with a clunky UI. An OS that I had to be every part of my tech savvy self and more. There’s no possibly way I could give Ubuntu to my mother, sister, or girlfriend and expect them to figure it out.

My sister bought a MacBook a few weeks ago, and except for a few pointers from me (cmd+c over ctrl+s, showing her what expose is) she figured everything out. She downloaded Adium, installed Adium. She’s using iPhoto and uploading photos to Facebook with the iPhoto plugin. She asks me a question once a week tops.

I installed Vista on my mothers computer, and she had no problems adapting.

Even I couldn’t figure out how to use Ubuntu with out a struggle.

My conclusion? Give me a proprietary operating system thats closed source with programs I have to buy over a clunky unpolished open source operating system with free programs that I have to jump through hoops of fire to use.

Apple uses the tag line “It just works” for their Macs, and I really appreciated that a few years ago when I switched. I now appreciate that again after trying to use Ubuntu for 2 days.

So why don’t people use Ubuntu? People don’t use Ubuntu because it’s not an OS for normal people.

Update: When I mentioned recompiling the Kernel to support HFS+ I was referring to HFS+ with Read/Write support, and not just read.