My first thoughts of gOS
Posted on December 30th, 2007 at 12:41 pmI’ve been running gOS via VMware for a couple days now and I’m sad to say, “I’m not overly impressed”. Some of the issues I’ve found so far are discussed below.
For someone that’s used several different Linux distro’s over the last 4 years, getting around, fixing problems and general setup wasn’t to hard. That being said, 90% of the people using gOS are NOT that familiar with Linux, these of course, are the people having trouble!
The so called “Support” is basically a joke. They promote it as “People helping People” But, other than a few people who really know what they’re talking about, it’s really just a big group of new users, lost and floundering around in Linux. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud all those that are jumping in and helping out where they can. My problems is that this “Support” should have been thought out a bit more. Did the developers really think the average user, most only familiar with Windows, would be able to turn on their new gOS machine and have no problems. I feel sorry for these people, I remember what it was like to try to do anything in Linux when I started, it’s overwhelming to say the least!
The Faqly design seems unorganized and messy, it’s hard to navigate, a basic message board setup would have been much easier to work with, search in and post to.
There should have been more time spend on doing up some documenation, a wiki, something! It’s slim pickings to find anything in the way of help online at all.
As for the OS it’s self, enlightenment makes for a pretty nice looking desktop, or Mac ripoff as it could also be described, but it would not have been my choice for a distribution marketed towareds new users. KDE or Gnome would have been easier and felt much more familiar to someone that’s only ever seen a Windows desktop.
Package management is also another issue I have. Usually with Linux it’s a problem with lack of package management, but with gOS it’s a case of OVERKILL! It would have been so much simpler to have only ONE application looking after adding and removing programs, searching and installing updates etc. It’s very confusing for new users to have 3 or 4 different programs that do the exact same thing. Synaptic is a great piece of software, why not just use it?
Also concerning package management, there should have been a big notice, the very first time gOS boots up, warning users that they won’t be able to download and install Windows software or use their old software on their new computer. How hard would it have been to explain this? There is a link on the desktop called “About gOS” that would have been the perfect place to tell users this important piece of information!
Now, not to completely rip gOS apart, there are things I do like, even in a VMware install, it runs remarkably fast, that was a nice surprise.
In conclusion, I’m not saying gOS couldn’t be a good operating system, but it needs a lot of work in several areas. The main one being support!
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