Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
What’s the Value of Technical Support, Anyhow?
Besides patching bugs and security vulnerabilities, the other aspect of “support” is technical support; help for when things go wrong. As I mentioned earlier, Ubuntu is free, and one of the conditions of this is that there is no official technical support for Ubuntu for the user. To be fair, there are some purchasable support options for larger organizations that can afford a support contract, but for the average desktop user this isn’t accessible. So as far as we’re concerned, Ubuntu doesn’t have any official technical support.
I spent quite some time gnawing over the idea of just how valuable technical support is. I have never made a technical support call for desktop software, often because I’m capable of finding and fixing the issue myself through the magic of Google, and because calling for technical support seems to be a futile exercise in being fed canned support scripts. So many possible things can go wrong with software that the person on the other end of the line may not be able to help you, which makes me question the value of technical support for software.
Trying to come up with a resolution for this matter, I posted a poll last year in our forums to get some user feedback. The skills of the people who inhabit our forums versus those who read our site means that this poll is not a scientifically valid poll, nor is it even a fair poll; it’s greatly biased towards the techie crowd like myself. Nevertheless, I wanted to know who uses technical support when they have it.
I had theorized that the results of the poll would end up reflecting my own views, and this is exactly what happened. When our forum participants were asked if they had ever called Microsoft for technical support with Windows (excluding activation issues), out of 52 votes only 9 of those votes were a “yes” for 17.3%. Clearly out of our techie crowd, the majority of users do not use their technical support options.
Based on this, I do not believe that technical support for a software product is valuable for the people most likely to be installing Ubuntu on their own. Or in other words: So what if Ubuntu doesn’t come with technical support? It’s not like most of us would use it anyhow.
I would take the time to separate the idea that software technical support is the same as total technical support however. It becomes another matter entirely when you can get support for a complete computer from an OEM. They can support both the hardware and the software, and that means they can (probably) help you solve issues when what looks like an issue with one element is really an issue with the other.
The benchmark here is Apple since they make both their hardware and their software, which puts them a step above Dell and other PC OEMs that are a bit more separated from the software. What I’m getting at is that is that even if Ubuntu came with technical support, it would be of limited value since they cannot help you with your hardware. If you need real support, you’re better off buying a computer from an OEM who can support all that you need (although we should note that even for computers sold with Ubuntu, the OEM does not usually handle the software support…).
Finally, just to throw out an example of how useless technical support can be even when you have it, let’s take a look at Windows (we’d take a look at the Mac, but OS support is bundled with the hardware). Even for a retail copy of Windows, which Microsoft offers direct support for, you only get free technical support for 90 days after activation. After that you’re out $59 per incident. It’s effectively installation and post-installation support, not support for continuing use.
In the end, not only would technical support likely be unbeneficial for most people once they’re past the installation process, but there’s no real precedent for offering technical support on just the OS. As such while there’s no technical support for Ubuntu, it ultimately doesn’t matter because no one else provides cheap extended technical support for just their OS either.
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fepple - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
That is exactly how the usability tests are performed. Developer asks Mom "can you change the background" then records what they dofepple - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
So i tried to find some links about this relating to gnome, but only got some pretty old ones. There are other methods they are using as well, like the 100 paper cuts idea. honestly have a look around and you'll see how much of a focus it is, particularly with ubuntuap90033 - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Face it, Linux is still back in Windows 2000 days. Try getting SLI working, 1080P working right, games working. IT IS Way to much trouble and damn near impossible for regular users. In Windows or Mac its next to no work and very little issue. Wake up guys, Linux has Potential but thats it. BECAUSE those who advocate it spend so much energy defending what is "easy" to them when they ought to use that energy making it ACTUALLY easy and USER USER USER USER (DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS WORD?) FRIENDLY... NOT PROGRAMMER FRIENDLY...newend - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
All of the things you mention are probably not that easy for grandma to do either. People thrive on saying it's so hard to do things in Linux, but I think it's generally not intuitive to use most computer systems. Imagine if you had no exposure to computers how difficult any system would be. A few years ago a friend of mine wanted me to install some software on her Mac. I had no idea how to do it. I've been using computers since I was 5 years old, but had to google for information on installing software.I actually think that Yum/Apt repos actually make it significantly easier to install software. The other day I wanted an application to take a photo with my webcam. I simply did a search "yum search webcam" and looked at the descriptions of included software and found Cheese which did exactly what I wanted.
When you know exactly what you want, and it's not available in the repos you use, I agree it is more difficult to get it installed. Still with both Red Hat/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu, you can do an install by downloading a package file. This doesn't get you the benefit of automatic updates, but it's just as easy to install as an MSI file.
fepple - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Well maybe they would want '1080p' but I'm not sure how that could be a problem unless you have some strange hardware that requires a specific driver... like another OS sometime needs you to go to a manufacturers website ;)Penti - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Installing nVidia drivers and XBMC or mplayer isn't that hard.But keep in mind there is only homebrew codecs on Linux which OEMs like Dell can never ship with there computers and has limited support of proprietary formats such as BD. It's the same codecs as ffdshow, or as in XBMC or VLC on Windows. What's lacking is a PowerDVD with BD support. w32codecs is also available for gstreamer, giving alternative support for WMV and such. Installing ubuntu-restricted-extras is essentially the only thing you need for it to work in Totem if you don't need/have VDPAU support. XBMC is definitively a decent platform to playback warez. You need to rip blurays to be able to play them back at all though. But an Ion is definitively powerful enough for 1080p h264 under linux. But because all that software contains unlicensed patented codecs Canonical don't officially support any of it. So it won't work on ubuntu OOB. Codecs aren't free.
fepple - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Thing is, 'regular users' dont care about SLI, 1080P and Windows Games... "where is the browser/word processor/email?" :)CastleFox - Friday, April 9, 2010 - link
Great review. Thank you for reviewing 8.04 LTS Please review 10.04 when it comes out. I am interested to see if they software center has changed the authors opinions.tiffanyrose - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
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