Based on Debian Linux and promoted by Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu Linux has gained a loyal following since it's inception. Today we'll be taking a look at Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog and see what this South African based distribution with a global appeal is all about.
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Linux is so multi-national, that it is ludicrous to attempt to attach negative images to it based on any nation of 'origin'. The kernel started with a concept from a guy from Finland, and has been added to by someone on every continent (with the possible exception of Antartica). Sure, it is localized in many areas, and some have definite 'headquarters' (Red Hat comes to mind). But it goes many of the basic Open Source principles to start mud-slinging based on perception of nationality.
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It's funny, there's really nothing terrible about Ubuntu Linux and its philosophy is so nice that it's hard for many trolls to try and rip it a new one so they start talking about race and Africa because they're stupid and clueless toenail eating trolls who don't know what "humanity towards others" really is all about, because humanity is what these trolls are lacking.
Ubuntu just works, and it works very, very well.
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>there's really nothing terrible about Ubuntu Linux and its philosophy is so nice
I agree. I switched to Ubuntu after using Red Hat (and then Fedora) for 8 years(?). It rings true with me. It has the right balance of user advocacy and central leadership/governance/commercialism. Debian and Gentoo were too ad hoc advocacy-based for me. Mandrake was too commercial. Fedora too unofficial and a "bone" tossed to hobbyists.
I'm sure people will disagree with my depiction of other distos. But, Ubuntu just seemed to strike the right balance for me. Maybe it's all the things it's *not* which struck a chord with me.
Mark
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2005-07-28
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AFAIK, Fedora uses the Luxi fonts (by default). These fonts have more curved edges - much like Lucida Grande in Mac OS X (and there are some license issues with it). Ubuntu uses Bitstream Vera fonts, which have a wider face. I'd say that both distriutions have very high quality font rendering, but they don't look the same.
Member since:2005-07-06
I recall that Shuttleworth gave a presentation in which he indicated that when Hoary was released it was compatible with Sarge. Breezy badger should again be compatible with Debian proper.
Since Ubuntu is basically a stabilized version of debian released every six months they won't change Hoary apart from security updates.
Many of the Ubuntu developers are Debian developers and patches are all submitted back to Debian.
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"Enought with Ubuntu already!"
No, not enough, Ubuntu is the next big thing and if you don't want to read about it, don't. The same applies to any subject you don't want to read about, don't read and don't post if you dislike the subject matter.
"You want Debian?"
Some of us have moved forward, into the light of Ubuntu. 
"And don't throw the buggy Kubuntu in my face."
KDE in Ubuntu works great for me, and by the way how long has it taken to get the latest KDE in Debian with Xorg? 
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RE: Ubuntu should be stopped
Member since:2005-07-06
Please stop your trolling and spreading of FUD. Watch, listen and learn:
http://dc5video.debian.net/2005-07-14/02-Ubuntu_Talk-Mark_Shuttlewo...
RE[2]: Ubuntu should be stopped
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>[Shuttleworth] should bring his thougths into Debian and should not try to destroy Debian. No Debain will not die tomorrow but in the long distant future it will be no more.
I'm curious. Why shouldn't Debian advocates/volunteers bring their thoughts to Ubuntu? Consider my case: I wouldn't use Debian until Ubuntu filled the gap that I felt was present. How do you know Debian wasn't destroying Debian "in the long distant future?" Hasn't Ubuntu filled a shortcoming in Debian and expanded Debian's reach if it brings people who seek a more organized and centrally led distro? Why is that an invalid way to look at it?
Mark
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He should bring his thougths into Debian and should not try to destroy Debian.
I don't think he is trying to destroy Debian and do you honestly believe Debian would change to what he wanted to achieve with Ubuntu. I don't think Debian would ever have time based releases or focus specifically on supporting a single desktop.
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"And for me this Shuttleworth is good marketing man nothing more.
He works only for his own interest (and only coincidentely his interest lie in the free sw world) and nothing more."
Not true.
http://www.hip2b2.com/about/foundation.php
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He works only for his own interest (and only coincidentely his interest lie in the free sw world) and nothing more.
As a South african I can CONFIRM the above statement is untrue. He has put alot of his own hard-earned money back into this country.
He surely does not deserve such a flippant remark. Furthermore, contrarary to your observations, Shuttleworth repeated over and has on many ther occassions that he is not a marketing man and that a product should "sell"(figurative) itself.
You seem to have taken defensive stance to what you perceive as a threat but may actually be beneficial to Debian itself..
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installed this on an old mac a couple months back, haven't had much chance lately to play with it, but the orginal weeks following left me really impressed.. though i prefer the KDE interface.. something about fonts just dont look right.. or maybe its just these dumb eyes being used to OS X.. when these window managers aren't trying to be windows is when they really shine..
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shuttleworth and canonical arent always good for the open source community as a whole, they work for their own ends, and debian will suffer because of it, that is unavoidable. however hoary is a fairly strong distro, installation is less helpful than back in the old days of mandrake and partitioning isn't very handled for intermediate users(beginners leave it alone, experts know what they're up to).
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...I find it is kind of a pain due to lack of developer packages installed during the default installation. I understand that it is not aimed at experience GNU/Linux users but for us that want a Debian base and like what Ubuntu has done it makes it hard to make it an admin workstation. The only think that saves it is you are able to go to Synaptic and select the developer tools etc.
Overall, however, great distribution!
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"Seems an odd time to be posting new reviews of Hoary. It's been out for a while now, and received plenty of reviews at the time"
Really, and yet I'm seeing new advertisements for WindowsXP on the web and in print magazines, yet how many years has THAT pos been out? I rest my case.
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Good points:
- Easy text based install
- Strong Gnome implementation
- Great centrally managed repositories, Synaptic preconfigured
- fairly fast
- most hd detection is good
- free CDs! (with free shipping!)
- unique default theme (human)
Weak points:
- Installation takes way too long - the decompression and copying of files takes longer than any other distro I've seen.
- Video detection and auto-configuration flakey. On all of my machines, Ubuntu failed in video config in one way or another - usually going to 16 colors, low refresh rate, 800x600, etc. I would always have to pop in Mepis, which has a feature to copy X config to HD, which would fix Ubuntu's failings (or I would have to manually config X, which is hit or miss). BTW - all other distros I've tried on these same machines (RH9, Mandrake 10, FC2, Knoppix 3.4 & 3.8, Mepis 2003.10 & SimplyMepis 3.3.1, DSL 1.1, Kanotix 2005.1, FreeSbie, and CentOS 4.1) have managed to detect and auto config video flawlessly.
- Lack of extra GUI config tools. Mandrake has MCC, Mepis has OS Control Center, RH/FC/CentOS has the various system-config-x gui utilities. Gnome sytem tools are nice, but fall short of the others.
- Selection of software installed on single disc way too limited. Knoppix easily manages to fit 2Gig of software on one disc (with it's excellent compression technology), but Ubuntu doesn't put much on the one disc. Kubuntu's lack of software (doesn't even have a text editor or games) is actually appalling. They could have easily fit on the "build essential" package, or Abiword & Gnumeric, a few more games, etc. The repos and Synaptic are nice, but it's nice to have more from the get-go.
- default desktop background in Hoary is uglier than sin.
- badly over hyped in Linux media/forums/community. Ubuntu is a nice distro. It really is. But it's not the best thing since sliced bread, and IMHO, there are better all-around distros out there (depending on individual needs).
Member since:2005-07-08
Jeff,
You've hit the nail right on the head. This same OTT "best thing since sliced bread" approach to Ubuntu happened with Gentoo a few years back. Give it a few years and all the hoo-hah about Ubuntu/Kubuntu will have passed and it will be just "one of the distros" by then.
Dave
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2005-07-06
you could say this;
nearly everyone has already heard of hoary, and I suppose everyone who was interested has installed a copy..............
However, I have very recently switched to Ubuntu full time on my main machine after running Mandrake, then Mandriva on it for years.
I have been sandboxing Ubuntu for a testing before I rolled it onto the main box, I was very impressed by how fast and stable it is compared to Mandrake/Mandriva, well done.
So.... although it has been out for a while, new reviews are still needed, for those dim people who never got the message first time around.. me included
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2005-07-06
If Ubuntu is the cream of the crop...oi.
Tried to install something to extract lha archives on Ubuntu 4.
->
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install lha
Ok, got a cryptic message about it being obsoleted.
Edited resource-list, uncommented a couple of servers, added 'us.' in front of some, all no go.
Then replaced the file with a googled newer version, and then it worked.
Oh that, and not detecting anything on serial-ports. Not ready for the desktop I tells ya.
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Anonymous (131.252.248.--) says:
First off this is OLD news and has been covered onto infinity. All the Ubuntu docs do say you have to edit xorg.conf.
That's funny, according to http://ubuntuguide.org that I can
A) install nvidia-glx (with aptitude, synaptic, or of course apt-get)
B) run "sudo nvidia-glx-config enable"
Then control-alt-backspace to restart X, and I'm done!
I can see why you posted anonymously, you're spreading FUD.
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I think ubuntu is a good move, but what concerns me is how far it can go.
1 is ubuntu able to keep stable moving after several releases and at that time maintaining several versions may become a hard work.
2 apparently ubuntu cannot maintain all the packages in universe. i happen to use a scientific package in universe, but it broke sometime during the first release, as i checked, it is still broken in hoary, acturally it has not been updated at all between last two releases!
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I installed ubuntu as a long time debian user in the past thinking...... wow.... this should be really sweet
well.... i was wrong, it was ok but there was just something about it that drove me nutts... it didn't configure the things i thought it should and it configured the things i wanted to configure myself (I like to do things manually)
I can't really put my finger on it, but i really did not like my experience with ubuntu
as of now... i'de say SimplyMepis is my favorate debian distro...... and i'm not gonna say what distro i use now cause it'll cause a flame war lol
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Okay, I know that Ubuntu is meant for the desktop, but, I don't think that it is all the way there. So I was thinking that if someone could take Ubuntu, finish off the customization of the GNOME desktop (eg. replace GNOME logos with Ubuntu logos), and include property software (eg. Nvidia/ATi drivers). Then Linux might have a chance at making it on the desktop
~Alan
P.S. just my two cents
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There's got to be a 20:1 ratio of KDE to GNOME users. I say this based on people I know. *Everyone* prefers KDE, and most Free Unix distros ship with KDE preferentially.
Exactly how many Linux/Unix users do you personally know to get that figure from? It'd have to be in the hundreds to even be remotely accurate.
Personally I prefer GNOME to KDE, however I don't like it all that much so I use XFCE4.
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Okay, I know that Ubuntu is meant for the desktop, but, I don't think that it is all the way there. So I was thinking that if someone could include property software eg. Nvidia/ATi drivers,webcam drivers and a decent IM Software full functional for voice and video chat. Then Linux might have a chance at making it on the desktop
Alan
Member since:2005-07-06
Well propriety drivers will never be installed automatically by Ubuntu as it goes against their philosophy. This isn't so bad, my 2 year old PC doesn't even have its' graphics driver installed automatically by XP,then again the sound driver didn't work either, and a couple other things.. but they do in Ubuntu, hardware is annoying as hell..
The bottom line here is that an absolutely huge portion of the Linux Community has tried Ubuntu, and fallen in love, and finally doesn't have to change distro every 3 months. The rest of you, who either haven't tried it or did and it didn't work for you, spend your time trying to pull it down.
Fact is if you hate Ubuntu it's just because you were unlucky with your hardware and now it's time to go back to Fedora (can't have been that great either seeing as you were willing to try out Ubuntu as a replacement).
I'm not going to go on saying how Ubuntu isn't perfect and blah, but those of you moaning really do look increasingly desperate, and it's rather sad. Ubuntu isn't just the *next* big thing, it's *the* big thing; massive market penetration faster than you or I can google for "japanese school girls +uniforms", get over it, at the end of the day it's just a piece of software used by geeks, anyway.
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webcam drivers and a decent IM Software full functional for voice and video chat.
Thats more in the hands of the makers of the webcams, the makers of the chat software and the kernel makers that it is in the hands of the Ubuntu developers.
Someone on the forum said it best. "The best way to solve the problem the Linuxs have with webcams is simple: just forget you have the damn thing."
(kinda joking)
Member since:2005-07-06
I liked your little joke, your sense of humour is appreciated by me, but not everyone around here will get it...
they will come back bitching about having spent $9 on a webcam and that it MUST work with Linux as it works with Windows and therefore Windows is better than Linux, and they must return to their trailers for another beer and a slap at the wife before they find something else to moan about
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ur all f*king whiners, u will always have something to whine about. Ubuntu/Kubuntu is great. end of story.
Ive tried probably over 20 distros and none have worked as flawless as Ubuntu. Tried it on both an athlon 32, an athlon 64 and an old iMac 300~mzh. More or less trouble free. Only the iMac ethernet card demanded some manual loading of the module/driver.
Distro comes on a single disk. The way it should be.
Installation is not pretty although it does work.
Its stable, not a single system crash, those apps which crashed were solved with updates for the apps themselves.
Everything runs smooth. Excellent responsivness compared to some other distros.
The thing I like the most is that they dont try to make their distro look like their own homemade software because its not. Its a distro. But that they keep the most stuff intact and dont put their logo everywhere and let users use the native config apps and so on that comes with KDE and GNOME.
and Yeah I know they got their own theme but thats OKAY!..thats what the theme engine is there for.
go ubuntu!
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I used to have Suse 9.3 and now moved to Ubuntu. I like the minimalistic way of Ubuntu. You have 1 browser, 1 email client and so on compare to 2 browsers, 3 mail clients and so on for SuSe.
The bad thing with Ubuntu is its package management. Say you install nfs applications and nfs support in kernel. Then you want to mount an nfs server, it will take minutes to do just one mount. After looking in to Ubuntu forums you see people saying you need to install portmap.
This is just one thing, there are lots of issues like this. Another thing is abondance of mplayer and mp3 support in Ubuntu.
Member since:2005-07-06
For anyone having problems installing mplayer / mp3 / flash etc, the Ubuntu Guide is brilliant as a first start. Often searching [what you need]+ubuntu in google often brings up the perfect instructions first time.
http://www.ubuntuguide.org/
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