OSNews

View Evolution 2.0 on Ubuntu Linux 4.10 here http://www.linuxbeta.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=120&s...

Now that's what I call a good review. Not that I agree with the author on all points (for example I think synaptic is terrible for novice users, but the ubuntu devs are working on their own apt frontend so that shouldn't be a problem), but it really gives you a idea about Ubuntu and it addresses the problems. In fact, I have encountered a lot of the problems the author mentions while trying out Ubuntu.

And I agree with the author, Ubuntu still has some serious issues, but it really is promising.

I agree, it was surprisingly good. I have become weary of the cookie-cutter distro reviews:

1) describe installation
2) give vague impression of packages/desktop

This review was well-written and extremely descriptive. I would like to see more distro reviews written by this guy.

All that said, I'm still not budging from slack

I installed Ubuntu on my Apple G5. Certainly PPC version of the Ubuntu. It has full 32 bit support. Installation went flawless. The thermal driver is also working. The only thing not recognized is the sound card. Ubuntu folks promised they will have PPC64 support in the near future. For those of you not having technical expertise to install gentoo or debian or do not want to pay yellowdog, Ubuntu is the distribution.

I almost didn't read it because I was expecting something similar to the other reviews on this site (install, small rant, done). But I am glad I read this one. It sounds like he actually used the distro. Good Work.

My Ubuntu experiences:
Install ok.
Setup x to use nv for my nvidia card, but my card doesn't work with the nv driver they ship (6800gt).
Desktop nice, simple, just works. Doesn't hurt your eyes with gradients.
They installed the gstreamer backend for totem, which unfortunately does not work well. The gstreamer backend will be sweet when it works, but for now using the xine backend would have been better.
Lots of polish that I am not sure whither to attribute to them or gnome 2.8
They default to firefox as your browser. I like epiphany, it integrates much better with the desktop.

Overall quite nice for a beta release.

(install, small rant, done)

Kinda like your post If you had posted this yesterday it might have made the news as a review hehe.

Has anyone had problems with the iso being burned on the cd? I been through many downloads of ubuntu and i burn it to cd, but when i go to install it on a machine, it gives me errors at the step of when it varifies the pacakges. But it will complain about different packages and not just the same one. Am i getting corrupted iso images? Any suggestions to a successful burn?

garrett

Try another machine. It most probably is not a burning issue (provided that your CD-R is not faulty, that your CD media is not brand-less and that you tried different mirrors).

Try another cdrom

Looks like the Mona Lisa from far away.

Does anyone know what direction this distribution is going, will be it a user friendly distribution to contend with Mandrake, SuSe, Linspire, etc?

Can we anticipate a graphical installer, not menu driven?

Check the md5sum, it should be on the ftp right next to the ISO. If you're in Linux use the md5sum command, if you're in Windows try http://www.md5summer.org

It is a great distro, installed flawlessly on my dell precision 450 workstation. By the way you can request a shipment of Ubuntu from their website. I think they will be shipping them in October. Nice review.

Yes, they're planning on a graphical installer, and I believe the ETA is Hoary. I read somewhere that they're considering porting Anaconda, the Red Hat installer.

Ubuntu Linux is impressive. Just one example -- I tested on a desktop machine with a USB network card. Once I had configured the IP address (network doesn't run DHCP) the USB network card just worked. Every other distro has required me to hand edit a config file to get it working.

On the Ubuntu mailing lists they've outlined their plans to add a simple application GUI that will make it easy for non-technical users to install applications. When that happens, I'm looking forward to seeing large-scale availability of Ubuntu Linux pre-installed and available from computer retailers.

Congratulations to the Ubuntu Linux team, a brilliant effort for a beta release.

Does anyone know what direction this distribution is going, will be it a user friendly distribution to contend with Mandrake, SuSe, Linspire, etc?

No, it will be a user friendly distribution to beat the crap out of Mandrake, SuSE, Linspire, etc.

I'm not going to be switching to Ubuntu, as apt simply can not compete with Arch's package management.

A curious statement. Left me wondering what's wrong with APT in Ubuntu? Ubuntu is practically Debian, right? And Debian's APT is clearly superior to pacman (more packages, more features, better stability).

What have Ubuntu developers done to APT to make it appear worse than Arch's pacman?

I knew this one was coming

I'm not saying that pacman is better for everyone, just for myself. In fact, apt/dpkg are much better suited to user friendly distributions because of the handling of configuration files, which would have to be added by a user friendly distributor if they were to choose pacman.

But that's also the primary thing I don't like about Debian. I much prefer to be in complete control of my system, to know everything that's being run, and most of the options they're run with. If something needs to be changed, I want to be the one to change it, because then I KNOW if there's a security issue.

Plus I'm a minimalist, and pacman has, mostly, only the bare essentials in it's functionality. That made it much easier to learn, and it also makes it easier to use. But that's just for me, most people will prefer Debian's system because they want things to work, and continue to work.

I know it wasn't clear, but the "I won't be switching" implies personal opinion applying to myself.

---
Michael Salivar

I forgot an entire point.

Yes, the Pacman repository is much smaller than Debians, more in line with where Ubuntu is at (though I expect Ubuntu's to grow faster). However, there's also the Arch Build System, which negates that greatly. Not only does it allow you to very easily compile a package from the official repositories, changing ./configure options, but it also provides a very easy means to compile your own packages into pacman packages. It takes about 1-3 minutes to write the PKGBUILD which the script calls upon, and then it downloads the source, extracts it, configures it, builds it, and packages it, ready for a 'pacman -A foo.tar.gz'. This makes uninstalling and upgrading said package much smoother.

Ok, but if your reason to write "apt simply can not compete with Arch's package management" is that arch does less and requires you to do more manually, then you have to admit that you were provoking a discussion about it.

Yes, I see. Some people would argue that neither APT or pacman can compete with Slackware's package management. ;-)

Is its name. I mean, what the hell is an Ubuntu? I could think of a million names better than this one.

That is why it is a comment not a review

It also has a lot to do with the factors such as: I just finished installing ubuntu, and I don't think people reading comments want to read a comment long enough to describe everything. It was intended to be more along the lines of a blog entry.

Spark sayeth:
Ok, but if your reason to write "apt simply can not compete with Arch's package management" is that arch does less and requires you to do more manually, then you have to admit that you were provoking a discussion about it.
---
Subconsciously maybe, but I really didn't intend it. Besides, package management is always a good debate.
---

Anonymous sayeth:
Yes, I see. Some people would argue that neither APT or pacman can compete with Slackware's package management. ;-)
---
Quoting the review:
Debian's package manager is more complex than most, both checking dependencies and handling configuration dynamically. For the record, both of these traits can also be thought of as weaknesses, but they're generally considered strengths.
I had you Slackers in mind with that
---

Adapt:
Thank you for your opinion, I'll certainly keep it in consideration, honestly. However, I do wish you'd accept what I say as my opinion, and if you disagree to please explain why instead of insulting as many people with as few words as possible.

"Ubuntu" is an African word, meaning "Humanity To Others". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.


that was the very first sentence on the very first page of their website...

all I have seen is praise for the name elsewhere...you are the first one I have seen to complain about it.

I for one like the name, it actually "means" something

"Is its name. I mean, what the hell is an Ubuntu?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu

"humanity towards others"

"I could think of a million names better than this one."

I think it is an excellent choice. Unique, appropriate to open source idealism, short and easy to spell. What's not to like?

Wow, just got done reading the review, this guy deserves a job reviewing things .

I have been using Ubuntu since the day it came out, mainly because It had Gnome 2.8. I must say i have enjoyed the experience, although its a little more work than KDE, it seems to let you learn more. I also really like Yoper so I am gonna wait and see if they come up with a Gnome version as well. I did find the install tough at first, then realized I had burned a new coffee coaster hehe. After remaking a new one it went flawlessly. I found it easy enough and I have only been using Linux since June.

I'm now running ubuntu on a Pentium II machine and an athlon64 x86_64 machine. Bye bye fedora, bye bye 5 install cd's, update problems, constant breakage.

I'm enjoying ubuntu, 2.6 kernel without selinux problems, gnome 2.8 without bluecurve problems, synaptic/apt update system, debian, python. It's clean, fast, and for the most part it just works (still a few areas that need some improvement).

I'm running firefox and thunderbird, evolution is just a bit "too much" for my taste at this point.

Congrats to the ubuntu developers, keep up the good work. ubuntu is already quite nice as a beta release and should only get better.

All this fuss about the name Ubuntu is interesting. Who knew what a Gentoo was the first time they heard about Gentoo Linux? I still don't know what Suse means (if it even has a meaning), and wasn't sure how to pronounce it for a long time. Debian didn't sound like much at first either. Nothing about Ubuntu sounds stupid or strange to me, even when I didn't know its meaning. But... what do I know? I thought "PlayStation" was a stupid name for a game system targeted at teenagers (which I was at the time), "Sounds like a Fisher-Price toy for toddlers", I said. Look at the PlayStation brand now, practically synonymous with video games as a whole, like Nintendo (which sounds kind of stupid if you think about it) used to be. I bet it won't seem weird or even funny to anyone after its hung around for a while.

But I have one question for Ubuntu users out there. Is mono/monodevelop/gtk# in apt-get respo?

> I still don't know what Suse means (if it even has a meaning)

It means "Software- und SystemEntwicklung" (Entwicklung is the german word for "Development").

Mono is not (yet) in the repositories, but they're working on that. If you really want them you can add this line to your sources:

deb http://www.getsweaaa.com/~tseng/ubuntu/debs ./

Among others, it has mono, monodevelop and muine.

See the ubuntu-users mailing list archives for more information.

I tried installing Ubuntu for a friend on his really fancy 10.4" Sony Vaio microlaptop. The installer was great, in my opinion, except the partitioning tool was clunkier than cfdisk and way slower (for an advanced user) than fdisk. Everything was detected, except the centrino wireless was not available in the install environment. This is not a problem, as long as it works once installed. However, Ubuntu misidentified the ipw2100 adapter (centrino wireless) as an ipw2200 (pci wireless). The boot process would hang on loading the ipw2200 module, whether booting in normal mode or single user mode. Sure wish there was a way to remove ipw2200 from modules.autoload or configure kernel modules in the installer. If they want to rely entirely on automatic hardware detection, they either have to get it right every time or let the user verify/change the configuration.

I also thought that this review was a refreshing change from the steadily decreasing quality of distro reviews.

a temp solution is to rename the ipw2200 module in /lib/modules/2.6.8.1.../kernel/drivers/net/wireless, or copy the ipw2100 module over the ipw2200 one.

This is definitley a cut above the rest. I've ordered an install CD from the web site - this will be my first serious use of Linux in a year. I can only hope that they iron out some of the issues that this review points out!

As far as a boot loader goes, I'm going to try using BeOS' bootman. I've never used LILO and I can't really get GRUB.

Cheers,
Chris

The install went well, but after I switched to the left-handed mouse option both buttons acted like the right button for a right-handed mouse. My system was useless...so I reinstalled and tried it again. Same result.

Well, I have personally given up. Ubuntu sounds great, the screenshots look great, but once the first stage install is over and Aptitude begins, the show is over. This is just a mess for people who do not have a valid Geek license.

Hope it gets better and i can try it again sometime, like when they use Anaconda or YAST to do the install...

I agree that the name isn't a very good choice. It just doesn't roll of the tongue nicely, like say 'Gentoo' or 'Debian' does. People will ask you how you write it.

As people in marketing know, this is the no. 1 problem to have with a brand name. It has to be both easy to remember and write. This is not. You won't have this problem with a 'Mandrake' or 'Red Hat'.

Can someone tell me, what is this menu by the notification-area?

http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2004-September/000637...

He didn't get around to submitting a bug because it worked after a round of upgrading and installing the Nvidia driver.

You might also check to see if there's more than one mouse protocol in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, but don't edit that file by hand unless you have to or the dpkg handling breaks.

Hope that helps,
Michael Salivar

During installation you can switch to vc/2 and load the proper module, and then go back steps in the installation until it detects network hardware again. This should (should) fix the problem for the current install, hopefully.

You might also try downloading a daily build, as it appears it was fixed here:
https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1751

It sounds like you're trying to install in custom mode? Did your ISO turn out to be corrupt?

If you can get standard mode working it should be much easier, Aptitude intimidated the hell out of me the first time I installed Debian.

Excellent choice of name. Just to clear one up. Ubuntu means humanity/community/together. "Humanity towards others" is redundant. Humanity can only be expressed towards other people.

Keep up the good work.
E

This might be considered bad form from a reviewer, but I've only written one review in my life, so I don't really care

I just want to thank everyone for their kind words, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Between the positive feedback and the Slashdotting I'm absolutely floored and ready to write another (if Eugenia can stand more of my rambling). I just wanted to send out a big collective thank you!

Michael,
And a big 'thank you' for your efforts and sincerity - it has been most refreshing to see your comments here. Your ubuntu spirit has raised the caliber of OSNews a notch.

On another positive note, I think it is most refreshing to read Mark Shuttleworth's posts in the ubuntu-users lists. Suprising that such a powerful man has the time and interest to help common users. He seems to have a very good grasp of the technical issues.

Me thinks Ubuntu might be a good thing.

happyg

I gave it a go, but I'm finding it difficult.

The first problem was the installer didn't seem to like my Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop keyboard and mouse when they were both using a single USB port. All I got was a repeated "%%%%%%%%%%%%%~*~@ ~%%%%%%%%%%%%%".
When I connected the keyboard via the PS2 connector it got better.

The next problem was a cd-burning error, the installer got stuck on the package bsd-utils, so I had to boot into Windows, burn another CD and restart.

I had some trouble understanding the partition manager, choosing a partition format and mouting it as "/", but I got there in the end.

I formatted my partition as reiserfs, coz everyone keeps saying its really fast an stuff, and it worked to begin with, but the next day when I started it up it told me the filesystem was readonly and wouldn't boot.

So I formatted it again with ext3 and reinstalled.
I managed to follow the instruction for installing the nvidia drivers, but I'm having trouble mounting my other partitions. I have a few that are NTFS and a couple of fat32. Using a root console and
mkdir /mnt/windows
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows -t -ntfs
seemed to mount it, but nautilus just gave an error when I tried to browse to that location

I wanted to get to my mp3s, but I had trouble working out which hdxx was the right partition. It turned out to be hda5 so i tried
mkdir /mnt/music
mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/music -t -vfat

This made a nautilus window appear, that seemed to show the right files, but everything was labeled as Unknown, and the files all disappeared when I tried to right-click on them.

In Xandros I didn't have to worry about locating and mounting my partitions, it did them all automatically, at the very least there should be a GUI for it that scans the disks, autodetects the partition types, shows the volume labels and asks you where you want to mount them.

I'll try it some more later on, but so far I've edited Grub so it still defaults to Windows, at least I know what I'm doing with that.

Hi,

After reading the review on Ubuntu, and doing a little research on the distro, I downloaded it, and gave it a try on a HP Omnibook 4150 laptop. Very impressive for a "beta" release. At install, this was the first distro I have tried that not only detected my wireless card, but then prompted me for the options, and activated it. X configuration was transparent. Kudos to the developers.

David

Ubuntu is the most impressive Linux distribution I have ever tried. I did run into some installation problems, but the community mailing list was very fast and very willing to help me fix the problems. Some very smart and friendly people on there. Once installed, it works and upgrading packages is a matter of point and click. Cool.

>>>>> I have a few that are NTFS and a couple of fat32. >>>>>Using a root console and
>>>>>mkdir /mnt/windows
>>>>>mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows -t -ntfs
>>>>>seemed to mount it, but nautilus just gave an error
>>>>>when I tried to browse to that location

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windpws -t ntfs (no - to ntfs)

you can't browse to the location because only root can browse it, not normal users. I found that I had to change the "umask" so that the file permissions would allow me to view it as user.

In my arch linux setup, I have this line in /etc/fstab:

/dev/discs/disc0/part1 /mnt/win ntfs user,ro,noauto,umask=000 0 0


in your case, it should look like
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs user,ro,noauto,umask=000 0 0

now all you need (as root or user) is to mount /mnt/windows (it should also appear in the "Computer" location in nautilus, afaik), and you should be able to browse it no problem. Change noauto to auto if you want it to mount automatically at boot.

"ro" means read-only - yuo don't need it, since mount will realize it can't write to the partition and mount it read-only - but adding ro here will prevent having an error message saying "mounting as read-only".

>>>>>I wanted to get to my mp3s, but I had trouble working
>>>>>out which hdxx was the right partition. It turned out
>>>>>to be hda5 so i tried
>>>>>mkdir /mnt/music
>>>>>mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/music -t -vfat

again, no -vfat but vfat You can also add a line in /etc/fstab

/dev/hda5 /mnt/music vfat rw,user,noauto 0 0

no need for a umask here, and be careful with the rw, it means "read-write" so you will be able to erase, create, modify files. Use ro if you want to keep it read-only.

>>>>>This made a nautilus window appear, that seemed to show
>>>>>the right files, but everything was labeled as Unknown,
>>>>>and the files all disappeared when I tried to
>>>>>right-click on them.

now that's weird, and I haven't used ubuntu or gnome 2.8 yet so I can't answer.

mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows
mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /mnt/music

Note, you don't have to mount under /mnt, but it's more standard. Using a /data directory, which is like a public /home/user is also quite standard. You'll also probably want to set the options below with the -O option.

You can also use the fstab to either make mounting easier, or to mount automatically on boot. This is highly recommended, even when experimenting with settings. It's much much simpler than -O.

To mount manually with 'mount /mnt/windows' and 'mount /mnt/music' add these lines:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs noauto,user,ro,exec,dmask=000,fmask=111 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/music vfat noauto,user,rw,exec,dmask=000,fmask=111 0 0

To mount automagically at boot:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs auto,user,ro,exec,dmask=000,fmask=111 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/music vfat auto,user,rw,exec,dmask=000,fmask=111 0 0

I think, it's been awhile.

By the way, it's -o not -O, and the fstab is /etc/fstab.

But then, that doesn't matter since an Archer already beat me to it. Typical

i installed it yesterday, just for fun. it's just great. almost everything worked out of the box, there are some rough edges, but nothing that i didn't manage to handle. having all the debian-packages available is another plus. great stuff!

i am a huge fedora-fan, but i will not remove ubuntu for now. i just might stay with it for a long time...

i even thought about writing a review, but this one is so long and good, there's nothing to add. good work!

regards,
christian

Hopefully that will attract other African countries. I will try it when I got another harddrive from my computer.

I installed and am running Ubuntu and I have to say the installation was pretty much flawless, except I would like it to have detected the fact that I have SMP and then installed an SMP kernel for me.

Sound works, applications work... I miss a few applications, but nothing critical (Pan, for instance).

I tried installing their nvidia-glx package[s] but when I did that, the sound stopped working and none of my GL screensavers would work. So I reverted and left it as a non-GL nv driver.

Looks slick! Not as "quick" as Slackware. Feels less bloated than FC. I'm going to give it a whir for awhile and see what happens!

Mike

Plan to install Ubuntu on a Via C3 powered machine, with 128 mb ram. Ubuntu kernel is compiled with :i386 support:? (that's way via c3 must work) How Gnome 2.8 affect pc's performances ? It's slower than previous 2.6 version ? Opinions ....

Yes, the default kernel is i386 and others are available in the repository as linux-source (NOT kernel-source).

I think the CPU will probably be alright, especially if it's one of the later generation C3's. It's the 128MB of RAM that I'd be concerned about, maybe it will be usable with enough swap. Is your motherboard's RAM maxed?

Is a Via Ezra CPU. It works as an generic '586' on Gentoo, Slack/Slax, Vector. It is detected by Knoppix / Morphix.

Have only one 128 MB sdram module (even so, gentoo works very well, but with fluxbox ). Perhaps i should create an swap partition with an least 256 megs.

Anyway, good article.

Ubuntu installed with all kinds of server agents, usb support, pcmcia support, and other stuff I don't need.

I'd like an installer that starts with a hardware detection routine that leads to a confirmation... and a chance to plug in support for hardware that got missed.

Then I'd like to get to a kernel, and _then_ give me a chance to pick and choose what I want in my base system.

I only took the Ubuntu install to the end of getting the "base system". There's too much stuff I don't need. As easy as the gnome set-up might be, I hope I can pick-and-choose my gnome packages.

For each part of what I want an installer to do, there's a different distro that does what I want. I want a compact kernel for low-end hardware (Damn Small Linux), conformity to the gnu standards and the apt-get mechanism (Debian), a user-friendly installer (Red Hat), and good hardware-detection and a live CD (knoppix and dsl), gnome and lilo (NOT knoppix). Nothing I found yet gives me everything I want. In fact, knoppix will not detect my ne2000 card automatically. Also, some systems don't seem to want to work with grub.

I'm new at a lot of this, maybe there's a way to do it that I'm overlooking.

Anyway, my $.02. Ubuntu is on the right track, but ease of installation should not come at a sacrifice of control over the install.

Good article, thanks a lot.
----
Obbie

I just downloaded the latet build of Ubuntu Linux dates 09/15/2004, now I can boot from the cd but while detecting my video card, the installation kinda hangs. I have a PowerMac G5 with ATI 9600 pro, has anyone tried this distribtion of Linux. Thanks in advance. Is/are there any tuturial/s available for installing Ubuntu on G5, please help.

I really do like Ubuntu, but my only complaint is that the sources.list file is read only. I read on the Ubuntu website that it can be edited by enabling Universe mode. Can anyone explain to me how Universe mode can be enabled???? Thanks!!

Nevermind, chmond works great for chaning the permissions on sources.list. In case anyone else has the problem; I was in terminal and used su to change me to super user, entered my password. Then used chmond 777 /etc/apt/sources.list to change the permissions to read, write access. From there you can get rid of the cdrom source if you wish and update your http or ftp sources.

chmon, not chmond my bad; late night eyes are crossing