OSNews

Look here, tis your answer:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=58862&highlight=conver...


What Users Should Be Converted to Ubuntu

After a year of Linux use I have decided (with the help of many Ubuntu users who have brainstormed with me) that there are two primary groups that could be benefited by Ubuntu. They fit into two categories, and one of them might surprise you.

Category A: Someone with very little computer experience.

Despite the stereotype of Linux as a hard to use OS, in many ways the most basic computer users have the most to benefit from it. A person that does little more on their computer than make office documents, burn a few CDs, play small and simple card and puzzle games, browse the internet, downloads media of Peer 2 Peer programs and plays this media, chat with someone on AIM, or someone that needs to do basic image manipulation (whats known as “photoshoppery”) can use Ubuntu will little problems after it is set up properly for them. With Ubuntu these users won’t have to worry about Viruses or Spyware (which they often have trouble controlling) and they don’t have to invest lots of money on software for something that is little more than a tool to them. Bonus points if the person you are trying to convert would have trouble installing a program in Windows.

Category B: Someone with lots of computer experience

In this category I am mostly talking about myself and maybe yourself- nerds. Anyone that likes to customize their computer, play with their computer, dance on the command line or play with source code needs to have someone introduce them to Ubuntu. These people are the easiest to convert, but its important you do so because then they can also help spread Ubuntu.

Now from each of these groups there are people that would not like Ubuntu for some reason or the other, and there is one huge group that I haven’t mentioned that normally would not like Ubuntu. Below is a list of people that you should not try to convert with much effort, lest you damage the image of Ubuntu.

This is a cliché, people say "2 kind of people" and then mention to opposite types, which apparently sounds less arrogant/naive than simply answer "everyone!"

It is just you. Read it over.

>Is it me or is only on of the two kinds of people
>mentions. This happens so often in interviews.

To be fair, this is only a small section of the interview, which appeared in full in Linux Format, issue 71.

uh, I've run both Enemy Territory and ZSNES fine in Ubuntu, without using Debian repositories.

If you want a KDE based OS like Mandrake and Mepis, you could always try Kubuntu.

nope, sorry, kubuntu also does not do the job.

enemy territory, now it runs perfectly under mandrake and also under mepis.

it is not a problem with the game, or with the system, instead it is the nvidia drivers for my 9550 card.

the stock ubuntu/kubuntu ones do not do it for opengl in ET. also the SuSE nvidia drivers also do not let me play ET after installing them...

SuSE and Ubuntu both allow me to play Glest etc
using their nvidia, but they wont compile nvidias own.

however, I can compile the nvidia drivers with mandrake and mepis etc, and they are sweet

Wow!
I must have done something incredibly leet when I last compiled the newest nvidia drivers on Ubuntu. Not that I did anything special apart from compiling them the way I would also compile them on any other distro, but as it is apparently not possible to compile them according to you, I simply must be a 1337 ub0r hax0r.

Thanks for making me proud of myself today.

you missed the point.
it is not that I could not compile under ubuntu...
it is just that the GAME would not recognise openGL
I repeat.
it is just that the GAME would not recognise openGL

under Ubuntu and SuSE

now it might be that my card, 9550, is not fully supported by the stock Nvidia drivers that Ubuntu and SuSE supply,
but the thing is, why should I have to compile on these 2 distros, when they say that Nvidia works 100% with their updates ?

Why are you installing Nvidia drivers for your ATI card?
And then you blame your mistake on Ubuntu?


http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9550/specs.html

Ehem, you have to compile the actual kernel module that gets loaded if you want to use nvidia or ati drivers with an unsupported kernel.

Jesus...

Uh, you're using nvidia drivers with an ATI 9550? If so, you are in for being made fun of in the most cruel and humiliating way, but I'm just going to say that the driver you want is called xorg-driver-fglrx. Look it up in Synaptic.

my mistake about the 9550, it is not an ATI card, it is an Nvidia fx5500 256mb

however, even though the nvidia drivers are binary, they still have to have the a module compiled for the kernel.... hence, you need to have the kernel source and gcc installed....

have any of you even tried this ?
did you not wonder why you had to kill X, run the script, and READ what it actually said ?
no ? didn't think so

have any of you even tried this ?
did you not wonder why you had to kill X, run the script, and READ what it actually said ?
no ? didn't think so

What are you talking about? You have to kill X so it can reload the new drivers. I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Of course, under Ubuntu, I would personally just use apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-settings

But if you want to do it the hard way be my guest. Did you edit your xorg.conf file to load the Nvidia driver?

9550...Nvidia...???? I can't find a 9550 on their site. In-fact, Googling for Nvidia 9550 brings up comparisons between Nvidia's cards and the ATI Radeon 9550....sure you got the right company there????

Wow!
I must have done something incredibly leet when I last compiled the newest nvidia drivers on Ubuntu. Not that I did anything special apart from compiling them the way I would also compile them on any other distro, but as it is apparently not possible to compile them according to you, I simply must be a 1337 ub0r hax0r.

Thanks for making me proud of myself today.

Same here!!! I didn't even do that, I just installed them through Synaptic, and they worked! I must be the only leet hacker in the world who can do all this "weird programming stuff" with a click of the mouse. :-P

I think I'm going to go and write a virus using my mouse now!

I'm using Kubuntu now, and it's nowhere near as polished as Ubuntu. Ubuntu was set up to use ESD for sound, everywhere, with useful shortcuts on the panels and update notifiers for Synaptic.
Kubuntu doesn't seem to be capable of using ESD the same way; I can't simply switch between them and keep sound programs working. The useful shortcuts are now in a folder on the kicker, and Kynaptic is... well, ugly and not as well-designed as Synaptic (thank goodness I can still use Synaptic), not to mention it doesn't appear to have been written with Qt and kdelibs. My general impression is that Kubuntu isn't all that much above a stock KDE, which is nice, but ugh.

> pity that I am in the THIRD group of people he mentions.

So that makes you someone who knows what a computer is, but not "Category B: Someone with lots of computer experience ". No offence .

Is it just me, or is this marketing talk like "you can buy our single in the better cd-shop"...

but when you try to do anything out of the normal, ie, enemy territory, emulators etc, it just bawks

no problems running et here, it just works

Well, I have had success emulating SNES, Sega Genesis, Playstation and played a few Windows games like Warcraft 3, using Ubuntu. Maybe you were just unlucky.

Why don't you try the actual Debian? It is not so hard, especially now with the installer...

I dont like xfree, I prefer xorg
also, I prefer urpmi over apt-get

It's very nice being able to apply CFLAGS recommended by AMD like: "-march=k8 -O2 -ffast-math -funroll-all-loops -fpeel-loops -ftrace -funswitch-loops"

And get another 1% of performarce. And you'll only need few hours to get basic things compiled. Ricers. =)

(Yes, you've posted Gentoo CFLAGS in interview with Ubuntu creator, how smart!:-)

"-march=k8 -O2 -ffast-math -funroll-all-loops -fpeel-loops -ftrace -funswitch-loops"

-ffast-math produces broken code.
Other options you chose will make your computer slower.

Anyway, take a look here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-309752.html

"-ffast-math produces broken code"

Allthough one could argue that the code was broken to begin with and -ffast-math simply triggers a bug...

A matter of opinion

yeah.. if you load all the repos its only like 11,000 packages..and no rpm hell.. and as far as installation.. its not graphically pretty.. but for me it was 4 clicks and a reboot 75 minutes total.. to a working system.. im not sure of what you are talking about.(btw..my system is an athlon 900, not exactly fast)

Sorry, what exactly is RPM hell?

Use dpkg instead of apt-get then come back when you got 'dependency hell'.

I think you are mistaken about the package availability. Debian, and by extension Ubuntu has the largest collection of software of any of the free OSes.

I have to assume that you are including Dag Wieers' packages to get Fedora's numbers up. His repo has 2,787 packages, Ubuntu "universe" has 12,654. Debian packages usually split things out into libs and apps though, so discounting all the lib* packages, there are really only 9,474 packages, oh and all the -dev packages, giving us 9,226.

So, I'm not sure which specific packages you are referring to, but in general, Ubuntu has 3 times the number of packages that Fedora does.

-Mark

"Not only that but the guy is a former astronaut which gives Ubuntu image.People think when an astronaut paves a way for a distro it must be good."

Better than some other operating system's founder who took more than he gave, IMO.

"2) Ubuntu is a fork of Debian unstable and Debian repositories are NOT compatible with Ubuntu and hence their collection is ripped off Debian builds which are NOT officially supported by Ubuntu. Only the meagre set of packages in the CD is. So Fedora does support more packages than Ubuntu does"

Nope. Not including anything from Debian's repositories, Ubuntu still has > 10,000 packages in theirs. Pure Ubuntu repositories. I never use Debian repositories, and as I open Synaptic as I type I see 16,310 packages listed. Yes, alot of these are libraries, but it's still much more than comes on the CD.

And they ARE ALL compatible with Ubuntu.

Carefull. Check out the sourcelist from apt and you will notice universe repository is not supported by Ubuntu developers meaning use it at your own risk.

I already mentioned your point #1

I'm not sure what the compatibility of Debian repositories has to do with the comparison I was making. Did Fedora recently become compatible with Unstable? Also, you are misinformed about Ubuntu support. Everything in Main (2,023 non-library packages vs 1,806 Fedora packages) is supported. This is quite a bit more than is on the CD.

Speaking about this in the abstract is hardly useful though. I could list many applications that are in Debian and not Fedora and probably vice-versa. My main point is that the original poster (I don't know if it was you) was mistaken about Ubuntu being so lacking in software.

-Mark

Number is deceptive. On Fedora package, it happens that one package include more applications than users thought. One of example is kdewebdev that include Quanta+ and more.

Ubuntu is a branch of sid, but the main Ubuntu repository is much larger than what is shipped on the install CD. So I don't know if we *support* more packages than Fedora, but we certainly have more packages available, ready to rock, in our *centralised* repositories that anyone on our maintainer teams can contribute to... and *anyone* can get involved in Ubuntu maintainership. :-)

"I imagine that many of the packages in the Debian repository are old, unmaintained and just useless."

You guess wrong. Only the latest versions of any application are allowed in testing or experimental.

GJ

That's why I like the 'testing' repository of Debian: not bleeding edge but stable enough and relatively up-to-date. Unfortunately, I don't think Ubuntu could have their level of integration (especially with Breezy) if they were using that approach. Commercial support could be a PITA even if they keep their bi-annual release cycle. They could do it Fedora-style, but many users don't like to be guinea pigs...

In my opinion, the best compromise would be a supported backports repository that is only attached to the latest release (e.g. Hoary, Breezy when it will be out). I don't know if they have the ressources, though.

I agree.

I have a Logitech USB headset which has a volume problem in Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary). In Breezy, it works fine, but the problem will not be fixed in Hoary.

Another example is the Terminal Server Client in Ubuntu. It has known bug when using it as a VNC client. This will also not be fixed in Hoary but will be in Breezy.

I don't really believe this to a perfect software development plan. The ubuntu developers don't have time to bugfix their current distro but use their time for the next distro.

Bugzilla[0] (or Malone[1] for universe/multiverse) is the best place to track these issues. Currently the issue is one of manpower; there simply aren't enough people who can adequately track every single issue. Your contributions are greatly appreciated.

[0] http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com
[1] http://launchpad.net/malone

-Daniel T. Chen

I understand this, and thank you very much for the reply. Your response is appreciated, and please understand that I'm not slamming Ubuntu, only expressing my feelings. I'm realy very much opposed to the 6 month freeze/release cycle because of issues like the ones I sited - to fix firefox, I had to add backports, and to fix kaffeine I had to add a kubuntu.org repository. I haven't figured out how to fix mplayer yet, since all the arch specific versions barf on DVDs, and the "custom" edition only works on p4's apparently. I've tried a few patches I've seen posted against the sources, but the few I have tried have barfed. My point is that I think a great deal of these issues could be resolved if the time to next release wasn't more important than hammering out well known bugs. I may be alone in thinking this way, but I'd much rather have a distro that took longer between realeases, and worked actively towards updating packages in the interim. As it is, except for debian proper, it seems very difficult to find a distro that isn't either frozen for 6 months at a time and/or in a constant state of flux. I personally think that this is a bad way to keep current users, and a bad way to entice new users. Again, I really like a *lot* about ubuntu - I think it is driven by a man of vision, I think the community that has grown around it is great, and I think the ideals it stands for are phenomenal. I just think that the current method of delivery isn't the ideal one.

they have nothing really unique about the distro itself

While the distro mostly aims at beein just another "It just works(tm)" distro there are some uniqe stuff surrounding it.

E.g.
ShipIt, Bazaar, Bazaar-ng, Launchpad, Malone, Rosetta

He's not kidding when he says "it's developed for developers".

"Fedora Extras is part of the larger Fedora Project and is a volunteer-based community effort to create a repository of packages that compliment Fedora Core."

This seems functionally equivalent to Ubuntu's "Universe" repository... including the community-supported nature of it.

-Mark

we still try our best to provide security updates and critical releases for those packages

That's good to hear. Where can users find more information about the known security problems in Ubuntu universe & multiverse?

Your posts "dissapear" because the readers of this site has votet them down. See the link "There are # comment(s) below your current score threshold." or change your browsing level to -5 (the voting your first post got...).

It could be the critical nature of your post, or the fact that you seem to be a clueless troll. If you did some research you'd notice that canonical developers are invloved in a number of important techonlgies at the moment.

As for what Ubuntu as a product brings to the table: I think a new distro was needed to build the new community that Mark envisioned. It's also an easy way atound the political mess of changing an existing distor/community.

CAN YOU GUYS PLEASE SPELL OUT CRITERIA FOR GOOD COMMENTS AND BAD COMMENTS BEFORE CHOP IT OUT. HOW DID YOU MAKE DECISION TO CHOP OUT....BASED ON FACTS OR EMOTIONS??

OTHERWISE ALL LINUX PEOPLE FLAMING MICROSOFT ON THIS BOARD SHOULD BE BANNED FOR LIFE, ISN'T IT??

AND I BELIEVE OSNEWS HAS NOT PUT THIS BOARD JUST TO PLEASE LINUX COMMUNITY. IT IS ABOUT SOFTWARES, SYSTEMS AND INTELLECTUAL DISCUSSIONS ALSO.

Criterias:
Don't spread FUD
Don't lie
RTF* before posting
In general behave likan intelligent adult

Also if you are going to be critical of something that many peolple have strong feelings for:

Structure you'r post like a PhD

E.g. good background, good data, logicly sound and good analysis and a reasonable conclution

Criterias:
Don't spread FUD
Don't lie
RTF* before posting
In general behave likan intelligent adult

Also if you are going to be critical of something that many peolple have strong feelings for:

Structure you'r post like a PhD

E.g. good background, good data, logicly sound and good analysis and a reasonable conclution
-------------------------------------------------------------------
How much of this applies to linux community when they talk venomously about MS? .....just curiosity......it's time to look into mirror.....

mirror, that was general advice to anyone, Linux zealots too

Your trollish message is not disappearing, or being censored by OSnews. Readers of OSnews decided that it was not a good comment: a troll, ill informed, whatever.

The -1 (system default) means that you by default see all comments that are rated -1 and above. Your comment appears at -1 as it is voted down, and once it gets voted down further, it disappears unless you choose to view comments with even lower values.

If you view all comments, including those that go down to -5, you will see your ridiculous comment is in this thread 4 or 5 times now. Every single time, the readers have decided it sucks.

It's so much easier for you to cry "black day for linux" or "censorship" than to figure out how the comments work, sheesh..

CAN YOU GUYS PLEASE SPELL OUT CRITERIA FOR GOOD COMMENTS AND BAD COMMENTS BEFORE CHOP IT OUT. HOW DID YOU MAKE DECISION TO CHOP OUT....BASED ON FACTS OR EMOTIONS??

OTHERWISE ALL LINUX PEOPLE FLAMING MICROSOFT ON THIS BOARD SHOULD BE BANNED FOR LIFE, ISN'T IT??

AND I BELIEVE OSNEWS HAS NOT PUT THIS BOARD JUST TO PLEASE LINUX COMMUNITY. IT IS ABOUT SOFTWARES, SYSTEMS AND INTELLECTUAL DISCUSSIONS ALSO.

I tried both ways... however, neither would let et play

everyone here has picked up the wrong thing. it is not a problem with the drivers, they work ok on other games

just that et does not play