MadPenguin is reviewing and raving for Ubuntu in an article with screenshot goodness.
Mad Penguin Reviews Ubuntu 5.10-Preview
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Every time something goes on on-screen such as an error, prompt, menu click, or a myriad of other things, there’s sounds of (I’m guessing) bongo drums. It’s all very tribal indeed, and falls in line with their whole image, but after about five minutes this gets annoying. Really annoying. I do have to admit I think the starting and ending sounds they’re using for the desktop are actually of high quality and very soothing. But let’s face it guys, bongo playing the entire time I’m working on the desktop is distracting.
ROFL. Unbuntu is my fav distro btw. This is just funny 😉
Ba Da Bump!
The author seems so excited about getting a cairofied theme that he misses some points:)
First of all, even if you have glitz installed, GTK/cairo will still use the xlib/RENDER backend. So installing glitz won’t mean anything to GTK.
Second, it has been said by the author of Clearlooks-cairo that Clearlooks-cairo will be very slow when used with cairo 1.0. If you are serious about using a cairoified theme, you should get the latest CVS of cairo.
Actually, I have been using Clearlooks with latest cairo, and I don’t see any performace difference between old Clearlooks and the new one.
I think the interesting point to get here is that GTK/Clearlooks/Cairo didn’t work well right out of the box. What he would have had to do to make them work correctly would have required knowledge he didn’t have, and that he shouldn’t be expected to have.
Of course this is just a preview. This review just brings up points that should be considered by those fixing 5.10 for release.
I think the interesting point to get here is that GTK/Clearlooks/Cairo didn’t work well right out of the box. What he would have had to do to make them work correctly would have required knowledge he didn’t have, and that he shouldn’t be expected to have.
He’s installing a Cairo-based theme out of a CVS repository, because it hasn’t been released yet. It’s not expected to work out of the box. He’s complaining about the performance of it, even though it’s CVS code that the author warns is slow. What exactly is he expecting?
I think the interesting point to get here is that GTK/Clearlooks/Cairo didn’t work well right out of the box.
I think you’re missing something – his comments aren’t about either GTK, Clearlooks, or Cairo as shipped with Ubuntu. They’re about an unreleased next-generation version of Clearlooks that he installed from CVS code, and are completely off topic as far as the actual review of Ubuntu is concerned.
I think you’re missing something – his comments aren’t about either GTK, Clearlooks, or Cairo as shipped with Ubuntu.…
No, I got that.
I also got that the the version of Gnome they shipped was supposed to be built on Cairo, and that Cairo’s hope of greater efficiency is supposed to come with hardware acceleration. The reviewer noticed that the theme shipped didn’t use Cairo and the acceleration wasn’t there, so the interface was slow, something at odds with how Cairo and Gnome 2.12 were being reputed.
So, he tried to fix this. This reaction and this result are not surprising given how the version of Ubuntu was configured as shipped.
I was trying to point out that this experience that the reviewer went through should serve as a valuable object lesson to those composing the eventual release of 5.10 – that a moderately informed (by Linux standards) user thought it was slower than expected and couldn’t make it faster using the available methods.
If I was a developer of Ubuntu, I would want to know this.
“I also got that the the version of Gnome they shipped was supposed to be built on Cairo, and that Cairo’s hope of greater efficiency is supposed to come with hardware acceleration. The reviewer noticed that the theme shipped didn’t use Cairo and the acceleration wasn’t there, so the interface was slow, something at odds with how Cairo and Gnome 2.12 were being reputed. ”
No, that wasn’t what he said at all. The theme shipped with Ubuntu wasn’t slow, it was the theme he DOWNLOADED from CVS that was slow.
Why?
Because it is a development version that uses unoptimised cairo code without any acceleration.
GTK+ as shipped with Ubuntu DOES use Cairo to draw widgets, but no themes currently take advantage of this to make whizz-bang themes. Why? Because it is early code and it is bound to be slow and unoptimised.
Until it is ready, the current generation themes perform perfectly well. And the reviewer did say the desktop had good performance.
Why do people think Ubuntu’s naming scheme is such a big deal? Who said it should be meaningful? the only purpose it needs to serve is differentiate one release from another.
Computers are logic based life isn’t thank god!
that’s true, the real naming is the version number… i.e. 5.10… it will always be year.month that will make it easy to keep track of where your at!!!
The next Debian fan who complains about Ubuntu’s naming… I’ll just tell to “take your woody potato and shove it.”
“Oh no! When trying to lower the company TCO by introducing a e-synergy into the vertical market, this name does not match my suit!”. Adam Doxtater, your whining about the name shows that you are an anal retentive humorless troll.
This is not a criticism of the review, or the reviewer, just a comment on a couple of his statements.
He went on for a while about how the releases had weird names (which I like, personally), and rattled off the development nicknames the various releases have had (or will have) before their release. These aren’t the release names. Still, this impression is probably common, and that distinction should be emphasised better.
Later he complained about how Ubuntu is a Gnome release, and that he was told that KDE fans should use a KDE distro. Even though he was able to find the kubuntu-desktop, he apparently wasn’t aware that Kubuntu, done by the same people, was just such a distro. Perhaps the developers or marketers could do a better job of pointing out Kubuntu to KDE fans, rather than pointing them in the general direction of any KDE distro – it would make those fans feel better supported.
Perhaps the developers or marketers could do a better job of pointing out Kubuntu to KDE fans, rather than pointing them in the general direction of any KDE distro – it would make those fans feel better supported.
Agree 100%.
the names are also used in the repository directory names for apt or Synaptic
kubuntu and ubuntu are NOT made by the same developers.
I really don’t understand why Linux must have that desktop as the default in many distros.
no really i prefer in order MacOSX WindowsXP and Kde interface.
Because Gnome is popular with a large segment of users. I have used both KDE and Gnome several years ago and eventually discovered that I like Gnome better than KDE.
Currently, well since 2002 I use a WM instead of DTE. But I still like reading about what is going on with the DTE world and distro’s based on said DTE.
Free of choice…. Choice is good!!!!!!!!! If you don’t like their choice, use another distro or another DTE…
I really don’t understand why Linux must have that desktop as the default in many distros.
no really i prefer in order MacOSX WindowsXP and Kde interface.
Well, it’s as always subjective. I wish that Ubuntu would have clearlooks installed by default instead of Human though, because it’s appeals to a wider audience.
But the Gnome desktop can be pretty. I use Milk 2.0 controls, RAqua borders and d3a icons and it’s looking very nice. Though, no distro should be shipped with such a theme by default since it’s a total osx ripoff. But it looks really nice to me anyway.
I really don’t understand why Linux must have that desktop as the default in many distros.
no really i prefer in order MacOSX WindowsXP and Kde interface.
Last I heard, you weren’t the only user, and other users do like Gnome. Instead of complaining, just download Kubuntu.
These aren’t the release names. Still, this impression is probably common, and that distinction should be emphasised better.
Probably, since the site still uses the project names even for the released versions, e.g the Download page refers to ‘Ubuntu 5.04 “The Hoary Hedgehog”‘. I don’t think they appear anywhere in the actual distro though, so using just the version number is simple enough.
Interestingly, he envisages “Dapper Drake” as a gay duck… I pictured a well-dressed dragon, myself.
I would like to Epiphany be the default browser. I always thought Firefox seemed a bit slower and felt a bit out of place in a Gnome environment.
You’re not alone. This has been brought up in the Ubuntu Forums many times (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=51178&page=1) and a page on Ubuntu’s wiki has been created (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EpiphanyDefaultBrowser) to point out Epiphany’s advantages.
I’m a fan of both Firefox and Epiphany but Firefox just does not integrate well enough in Ubuntu in my opinion (breaks GTK+ themes, doesn’t use GNOME preferences, etc) to warrant it being the default Ubuntu browser.
I think one of the things holding Epiphany back is that Gecko isn’t a seperate library. As it stands now, if Ubuntu shipped with Epiphany, Firefox would still have to be installed to satisfy Epiphany’s dependence on Gecko.
Dapper Drake is a snappy name, I thought. To each his own, though…
Man Penguin does do some good reviews.. its interesting he starts out negative about Ubuntu and ponders on the negatives for quite a while…
I personally have not seen the spark for Ubuntu/k… hardware detection for me has not been so good out of the box.. mainly giving me 640×480 and no sound even though 99% of others are fine…
I also find Ubuntu lacking mainly probably because of server side of apps and other great stuff such as xen missing etc..
The thing i dont understand is yast was gpled quite a while ago and no one else seems to want to use it… or use parts of it…
the other thing id like to know about Ubuntu is upgrading from one release to another.. gnome 2.10 to 2.12 (from the net)… for me on mandriva gnome breaks so much… last time I had both gnome and kde running / fighting at the same time for me desktop…
if its 100% free then why waste so many cds one installed upgrading should work 100%…
I also find Ubuntu lacking mainly probably because of server side of apps…
Well, is *is* a desktop-oriented distro… shipping web and mail servers and the like is just excess baggage. Nothing stops you from installing them anyway though…
I understand this but how long would it take to setup Ubuntu for thats needed or wanted…. i bet much longer then suse madriva or others…
Ubuntu’s install is actually fairly quick, simply because it doesn’t ask much of you. Language, keyboard layout, time zone, and some partitioning if you want (otherwise you can skip that step). There’s no selecting which packages to install or anything like that because they made those selections for you.
On that note, have they included Smeg or some other menu editor with the default install this time? That’s really the only thing that pisses me off about Gnome and it would be nice to get a menu editor “out of the box”, as it were.
It’s in the first page of the review:
Features:
* Linux kernel 2.6.12-8
* gcc 4.0.1/glibc 2.3.5
* X.org 6.8.2
* GNOME 2.12.0 desktop environment
* gtk 2.8.3/Cairo 1.0
* OpenOffice 2.0 beta 2 (actual version is 1.9.125)
* Novell Evolution 2.4.0 email client
* Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 Internet browser
* Gaim 1.5.0 instant messenger
* GIMP 2.2.8 image editor
* Smeg menu editor for GNOME <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<&l t;
* Synaptic 0.57.4 package management
Ciao,
chris
first off “dapper” doesnt mean gay. It ususlly means..sharp, well dressed.. good looking…so it would mean the sharp well dressed male duck, not the gay duck. Secondly Ubuntniks generally refer to the releases as “warty, hoary, and breezy.. but if your overly starched shirt requires it call ethe 4.10, 5.04 nad 5.10 respectively.
“On the topic of crashing, I need to mention that I had some issues with applications in Ubuntu just dying on me for no reason at all. It didn’t happen often, but it happened all the same. It is at this point that I need to point out this version of Ubuntu is still technically “in development”. The final “gold” version isn’t supposed to be released until October. That said, a certain amount of crashing is expected and I feel that that threshold was never crossed by this distro at any time while writing this review. While it was annoying to have, say, Gftp die during a critical transmission, it was completely understandable considering the environment I was in. ”
Is this just double talk? Why are you using a dev build and using it for a critical download? Just seems a little odd to me.
———————————————————————- ——–
“If you’ve got no real centralized management of an operating system (or in this case, distro) you don’t have a serious desktop package. I assure you it’s very true and for proof you don’t need to look very far at all. There are two operating systems that immediately come to mind who have this whole thing in the bag: Microsoft Windows and Apple’s OS X”
Then why are you using Linux? Or any FOSS app?
———————————————————————- ———
“At the end of the day I don’t really give a shit about philosophy or and of the other nonsense associated with the overall Ubuntu image that’s being projected. ”
“If they continue on down the path they’re on now, Dapper Drake (sigh….) will be hard to compete with for the desktop space.”
Too many contradictions and lack of consistency.
“Then why are you using Linux? Or any FOSS app? ”
So, if you don’t like an aspect of an OS you don’t use it at all? Wow…
“Too many contradictions and lack of consistency.”
Your two examples not only don’t contradict each other, but have nothing to do with each other.
Yes you’re dead on the money. The review pretty much states that the Cairo thing is completely off topic and has no bearing on anything. It was nothing more than a reviewer toying around. That’s all. RTFA guys. Also you’ve gotta take this with a grain of salt. Most of the comments you all are complaining about are made tounge in cheek. The Cairo performance issues are expected and the review says so. Consider it a warning I guess. Who knows. In any event it’s no reason to complain. Take also, for example, the “gay duck” reference. It’s a joke guys. We all know it means “sharp dressed”. Think about it for a moment.. sharp dressed duck — gay duck. Relax folks. Seriously.
“At the end of the day I don’t really give a shit about philosophy or and of the other nonsense associated with the overall Ubuntu image that’s being projected.”
“If they continue on down the path they’re on now, Dapper Drake (sigh….) will be hard to compete with for the desktop space.”
Too many contradictions and lack of consistency.
Sure thing there big guy. For your information the Ubuntu “philosophy” is spread all over their front page. That’s what the text you quoted is referring to in the first example. The second is in regard to the software/distro in general. For those in class who had trouble paying attention: naming bad, software good. No contradictions there.
“Interestingly, he envisages “Dapper Drake” as a gay duck… I pictured a well-dressed dragon, myself.”
Well, considering I know English, Spanish, Dutch and the Caribbean language Papiamento (closely related to Afrikaans)…I think I can figure out what it means. :-p
“Dapper” means “brave” in Dutch. “Drake” is a male duck, but I also heard someone say the other day that it could be a youngling of a mythical “dragon” creature. So the code-name might actually translate to “Brave Duck” (most likely) or “Brave Dragon” (less likely). Certainly nothing “gay” about that. 😉
Drake *is* old English for Dragon.
Or, if you pronounce it draakeh you’ve got the swedish word for dragon (or kite, same word), “drake”.
Drake *is* old English for Dragon.
The Old English word for “dragon” was “draca”, from which we have this secondary meaning of “drake”. Another common word for “dragon”, probably even more common (read the Beowulf!) was “wyrm”, but here semantic change has hit again even harder, because in current English the word has become “worm”. Why? Keep in mind that the present day image of a dragon is somewhat different from ancient times, when dragons were conceived as reptilian, snake-like animals (think about the chinese dragons). In fact both OE words (“draca” and “wyrm”) also meant “(giant) snake, serpent”: in the case of “wyrm” the general idea of a crawling animal stuck during the centuries, until it modified the meaning of the word to point to a “worm”.
There, end of the etimology lesson! ;o)
rehdon
“There, end of the etimology lesson! ;o)”
the correct spelling is etymology.
It was a joke!! Is everyone blind to that? Why aren’t the Oregon potheads up in arms for the weed reference in the review?? Because they probably got the joke….. either that or they didn’t read it
Seriously folks, lighten up. It was obviously a joke. Does everything always have to be served dry to be understood?
I wrote to the author and he said you were right, it’s a joke. I was obviously fooled by the fact that it, er, wasn’t at all funny…it wasn’t offensive or anything, it just…wasn’t funny.
If Ubuntu used KDE by default how good would it be, seriously?
It’s such a shame they resort KDE to a side project – making it bug ridden – just have a look at the control panel in the hoary release of kubuntu.
Well done to the Gnome developers for finally having a gui for editing the menu in this release. KDE is years ahead of Gnome in all respects.
I guess i’ll stick with MEPIS.
If Ubuntu used KDE by default how good would it be, seriously?
It’s such a shame they resort KDE to a side project – making it bug ridden – just have a look at the control panel in the hoary release of kubuntu.
Well done to the Gnome developers for finally having a gui for editing the menu in this release. KDE is years ahead of Gnome in all respects.
I guess i’ll stick with MEPIS.
OK, if this happened, you would get a comment along the lines of:
If Ubuntu used Gnome by default how good would it be, seriously?
It’s such a shame they resort Gnome to a side project – making it bug ridden – just have a look at the menu editor in the hoary release of Gubuntu.
Well done to the KDE developers for finally having a gui for editing the menu in this release. Gnome is years ahead of KDE in all respects.
I guess i’ll stick with Fedora.
Get my point? They can’t please everyone. KDE has enough distros, let Gnome have some too 😛
(That was a joke, for the legions of humour impaired OSNews readers)
“OK, if this happened, you would get a comment along the lines of:
…
Well done to the KDE developers for finally having a gui for editing the menu in this release. Gnome is years ahead of KDE in all respects. ”
You wouldn’t hear this because KDE has had a gui for editing the menu for years while Gnome hasn’t, which was part of his point. You can’t turn it around and throw it back (even as a joke) by switching the names of the two DEs involved, because it becomes untrue.
gnome lacked a menu editor only for 2.10.0, you suckah
gnome lacked a menu editor only for 2.10.0, you suckah
And my dad has … OK, nevermind
hmmmm.
I never had one in 2.6 or 2.8
In 2.8 and earlier you could edit the menu by right-clicking on the Applications/foot menu items directly.
I’m a happy Ubuntu (hoary) user who stuck with Gnome’s desktop, but came from a background of using KDE. Firstly I don’t see myself as abandoning KDE just because I chose to use metacity/gnome-panel/nautilus for my desktop.
While I happen to greatly appreciate KDE’s technical merits and the ability of apps to swallow parts of other apps, I also love the clean, uncluttered Gnome desktop, and Nautilus’ no-nonsense interface.
I’m using Amarok, kget and kopete along with the Gnome desktop right now, and QtCurve with Bluecurve icons to get a consistent beautiful theme for Gnome and KDE apps.
My question is why don’t any Linux distributors want to leverage the power of combining both desktops? Sure it’s a bit bloaty with all the respective daemons loaded, but no worse than OS X or Windows XP and the consistency with the QtCurve theme loaded beats both OS X (Metal, Unified, Aqua, Pro-Apps etc etc) and Windows (5 different widget sets).
QtCurve + GdkXft even makes Gtk1 apps look identical to KDE & Gnome2 stuff. Please Linux distributors! Gnome and KDE applications can, and do interoperate nearly perfectly, seize this moment to win the interface consistency war, and pour water on the flames of the Gnome vs. KDE battle once and for all!
Linux + Gnome + KDE = win.
And is he fourteen or fifteen? I bet he’s the best darned writer in his whole junior high school!
Is just he joking around when he devotes so much space in criticizing the names Breezy Badger and Dapper Drake? I can’t tell.
I’m not sure somone with a site called MadPenguin should be the judge.
./autogen.sh –prefix =/usr
make sudo make install
A classic mistake. Now your package based system has cruft littered all over /usr. He should have installed to /usr/local or better yet, built a .deb
apt-get install checkinstall
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall
Now you have .deb package which is easy to remove with Synaptic or ‘dpkg -r package.deb’
There is still no VPN wizard in there! Come on, how hard can it be, linux has got support for it built-in.. its only damn near impossible to configure for non-hackers. I just want a vpn wizard which windows has got for quite a while now.
“There is still no VPN wizard in there! Come on, how hard can it be, linux has got support for it built-in..”
Actually, this is quite hard. VPN is very tricky for a few reasons: First, the server is not on the Internet. The client gets a huge list of routes to the server from the authentication host, from which the client needs to choose the best route. Then the client needs to generate cert/key pairs for each CA key that the server might be using for authentication, determine if the server is listening on UDP or TCP, what authentication protocol is being used (SSL, Kerberos,…), whether the connection is routed or bridged, etc. In routed mode, the client must check the netblocks defined on the VPN for collisions with the locally defined netblock, and set up NAT for any colliding subnets.
“its only damn near impossible to configure for non-hackers.”
This is why most companies supply their employees with a preconfigured VPN client. In the early days, management assumed that their IT staff would have no problem implementing VPN for their networks. This turned out to be a boon for network enginners everywhere, many of whom made a living doing VPN consulting.
“I just want a vpn wizard which windows has got for quite a while now.”
There’s Kvpnc, a Qt frontend for the Cisco client. It’s not a whole lot easier than the regular Cisco client for Linux. The OpenVPN webpage as some good information, but it’s not entirely for the faint of heart. I would ask your IT department about this. I asked mine and they pointed me to an rpm for the ATT client. It’s hacked by IBM, though (as in: no, you can’t have it, it’s mine).
You can also install network-manager and it’s vpn plugin from breezy’s apt repos to get a very simple network configuration tool – including VPN set wizard. This will be default in dapper.
“Ubuntu’s install is actually fairly quick, simply because it doesn’t ask much of you. Language, keyboard layout, time zone, and some partitioning if you want (otherwise you can skip that step). There’s no selecting which packages to install or anything like that because they made those selections for you. ”
Except the keyboard layout is not working! I have problem with my swiss french kbd. It seems the canadian kbd is problematic too. See
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11912&offset=90&rows=99&thres…
If somebody can inform Ubuntu’s folk…
Well, actually you can inform them by fileing a bug:
http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/
Also osnews certainly isn’t the best place to get support. You might want to drop by http://www.ubuntuforums.org for that.
“Well, actually you can inform them by fileing a bug:
http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/“
Thanks for the link. It seems to me, reporting a bug is as complicate as installing Linux. I gave up.
Thanks for the link. It seems to me, reporting a bug is as complicate as installing Linux.
Actually entering a bug is not that complicated…and installing Linux certainly isn’t! Come on, if you’ve installed Ubuntu you have to admit that it is easier to install than Microsoft Windows is…
In any case entering a bug is a good idea, because it may help others with the same issues. In the meantime, have you tried with the Ubuntu/Kubuntu live CDs (including Breezy Badger)? You can always give Mandriva a try, I’ve never had console keyboard problems with them.
For the record, I did not have any problem using my French Canadian keyboard in the console mode of Kubuntu Hoary…I know Wrawrat had a problem, as indicated in the other thread, but for me it worked right the first time. There may be an issue with a specific type of keyboard…
For the record, I did not have any problem using my French Canadian keyboard in the console mode of Kubuntu Hoary… I know Wrawrat had a problem, as indicated in the other thread, but for me it worked right the first time. There may be an issue with a specific type of keyboard…
Actually, my keyboard does work in Kubuntu… Since some of my classes are requiring kdevelop, I had to install Kubuntu on my laptop. Got no issue with the layout. Same thing with Debian Sarge. Didn’t tried K-Breezy, though.
You guys are being particularly brutal today!! Even for OSNews standards. There’s definitely some major misinterpretation of the words that make up the review. Let me try to help:
First, if you’ve been around the block for a couple months you’ve read at least one of Adam Doxtater’s pieces before. He’s not 14 and this is not his first review. His only major mistake was putting the comments about the codenames near the top of the review.
He is aware of Kubuntu. He does not express any comparison between KDE and GNOME. He wan’t to use amaroK not because GNOME sucks and KDE rules, but because he prefers amaroK to Rhythmbom. There’s nothing preventing him from installing this KDE application on Ubuntu, nor is there anything preventing him from installing the whole Kubuntu desktop environment on Ubuntu. That’s it and that’s all.
Cairo isn’t intended for heavy usage on Ubuntu Breezy. It’s not on the roadmap for this release. Right now Cairo is unable to use the Glitz backend, and therefore Cairo is not even meant to be accelerated (hardware or software) at this point. When EXA is included with Xorg 6.9/7.0, this will become a possibility. Cairo is a toolkit for GTK+. If applications want to use the Cairo API, then Breezy will support that. It won’t be accelerated. This is what Adam experienced when trying the experimental Cairo theme on Breezy.
The Ubuntu developers know about this. Xorg 6.9 should come out between GNOME 2.12 and 2.14, and therefore the GNOME developers knew that it would be beneficial to include Cairo toolkit support and the Glitz rendering engine in order to be ready for when EXA comes along. Ubuntu follows the GNOME release schedule, and Cairo can render to xlibs/RENDER on Xorg 6.8, albeit not very efficiently.
My contribution to today’s KDE/GNOME flamewar is this: GNOME stripped out a lot of functionality and changed course starting with version 2.6. They had to do this for the good of the project. They’ve been building incrementally ever since, making good progress in general, sometimes leaving some gaps in certain releases (like the menu editor in 2.10 and pure-spatial nautilus in 2.8/2.10). But they’ve been listening to criticism and improving steadily. This is a tried and true model for open source development.
Meanwhile, KDE has maintained the upper hand in functionality and performance (starting with KDE 3.1 or 3.2), although it has been struggling a bit in consistency and simplicity. It has the advantage of a commericially supported toolkit development team so that the KDE project can concentrate on applications and integration. KDE is now getting to the point where they feel the pressure (Qt 4) to do an overhaul in the form of KDE 4.0. The vision sings a song of revolution. Although there is potential for great innovation, the project will be late, and there will be some functionality gaps left in its wake. The overhaul/revolution is not a native play in the open source playbook.
So, it’s useless to make a statement regarding which DE is years ahead of the other. They’ve been in opposite development cycles for the past two years, and they’ll be in the reverse roles for the next two. If you believe the next two years will be more important for the Linux desktop than the two years after that, then you invest in GNOME. If you think that the movement will pick up speed several months after Vista, then you find KDE’s roadmap attractive.
I’m a geek, I have no loyalties. I use whatever software is in the growth phase. Right now that’s GNOME over KDE.
However, I’m actually using PekWM right now. It’s growing while Fluxbox is stagnating. Same idea.
Well said but …
“He’s not 14 and this is not his first review. ”
What do you think age’s got to do with reviewing? Can’t 14 years write good reviews. I bet half of the immature trolls here are about over 18. If you have a sensible brain, know how to run a Linux distro and have excellent English to pen down your skills coupled with the technical knowledge – you can write a Linux review and a 14 year can do that for sure!
Offtopic :And yeah trust some of the trolls @ Osnews to kickstart a GNOME vs KDE flamebait series every fortnight or so…
Ubuntu has gone a long way to make the system easier to manage, but there’s still a long way to go.
That’s the case for every Linux distro (better yet every OS).Though i wish the Ubuntu project was initiated years earlier,you simply can’t overlook the fact they have achieved so much in so little time,that’s impressive and deserves some kudos.
./autogen.sh –prefix =/usr
This has to be: “./autogen.sh –prefix=/usr”,without the space between “–prefix” and “=/usr”.
I agree with the author Ubuntu is with great pace heading for the main leaque.Unlike the author though i’m fairly sure they will succede in doing so and might even go beyond.
kudos to the devs and users submitting bugs and improvements.
“I agree with the author Ubuntu is with great pace heading for the main leaque.Unlike the author though i’m fairly sure they will succede in doing so and might even go beyond.”
I agree for the most part. However, Ubuntu either needs to get rid of its 100% open source philosophy (proprietary codecs/plugins by default), make installing these packages an installation option, or make installing these packages a mind-numbingly simple post-installation task (i.e. “Do you want to install proprietary codecs/plugins? [Yes|No|Stop asking me] when you start the add/remove programs interface).
And has anyone gotten gstreamer to work in Breezy? I thought that this would be working by now, but my past experiences have been… well, it just doesn’t work and I know it will take less time to install the xine backend than to figure out why.
I use Totem with GStreamer in Breezy. It works flawlessly. Even DVD-menus work great. Totem appears quite stable as well and no longer crashes like crazy. The win32 codecs work great as well, except for wma9, but this I think is more a result of my running the AMD64 version of Ubuntu.
My only gripe is that the new sidebar has a tendency to make windows appear with the wrong aspect ratio. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.
I agree for the most part. However, Ubuntu either needs to get rid of its 100% open source philosophy (proprietary codecs/plugins by default), make installing these packages an installation option, or make installing these packages a mind-numbingly simple post-installation task (i.e. “Do you want to install proprietary codecs/plugins? [Yes|No|Stop asking me] when you start the add/remove programs interface).
Well….Ubuntu won’t drop its philosophy (Mark is doing this for fun so he calls the shots). And to help more with installing those things could make Ubuntu developers accomplices to a crime in a lot of the world. So…if all the “proprietary codecs/plugins” are holding back Ubuntu by default then it will be held back. Thats why Linspire is there for.
If you don’t mind that its not the default, there is Easy Ubuntu:
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=86
Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning: “I can’t install Gentoo”
No, actually it is an ancient African word meaning: “I have discovered that any brainless monkey who is able to copy and paste can install gentoo, but I have also discovered that a distro on which takes ages to install and update software simply isn’t worth my time”.
>No, actually it is an ancient African word meaning: “I have discovered that any brainless monkey who is able to copy and paste can install gentoo, but I have also discovered that a distro on which takes ages to install and update software simply isn’t worth my time”.
Cool down 😉 I use both distros and each one has its merits: with Gentoo I can do the ricer’s stuff and with Ubuntu I have a working system in about 25 minutes. It’s just funny to realize how many of the Ubuntu adopters come from unsuccessful attempts to run Gentoo.
Ubuntu’s naming policy is confusing. If there’s Kubuntu to provide a KDE system on one CD, then why not call the GNOME-system-on-one-CD Gubuntu? And then there could be the whole distro (including the universe stuff) packed on many CDs and that could be called just plain Ubuntu.
I guess its because Ubuntu means humanity towards others. And incidentally Kubuntu also means towards humanity in Bemba.
But I am not sure if Gubuntu means anything.
Ubuntu means humanity towards others.
That’s cool, and it’s explained on the Ubuntu web site.
And incidentally Kubuntu also means towards humanity in Bemba.
But I am not sure if Gubuntu means anything.
I guess most Kubuntu users don’t know Bemba so, for them, Kubuntu mainly stands for “Ubuntu + K(DE)”. And that’s somewhat confusing, because Kubuntu CDs come without GNOME. And if you can have Ubuntu without GNOME, then apparently GNOME is not an integral part of Ubuntu. Hence, it would make sense to call the Ubuntu + GNOME bundle “Gubuntu” (“Humanity towards others” with GNOME).
The confusing part is in defining where Ubuntu starts and where it ends. Apparently many users will activate the universe repos in Synaptic so, in practice, all the packages that are available from Ubuntu repos after installing Ubuntu will also become part of Ubuntu.
BTW, there’s also a project called Edubuntu. Now, don’t tell me that Edubuntu is also an African word. 😉
It’s just funny to realize how many of the Ubuntu adopters come from unsuccessful attempts to run Gentoo.
Is that so?
I like all distros were people really try to make something out of it,from the smallest one man/woman distro
upto the multi-million $ funded distro.The fact that i still like and use CentOS(if i had the money i would buy RHEL4 or SLES9),Gentoo,doesn’t mean i have to stop being positive about other distros progress and reviews.
(K)Ubuntu are both great and all but we shouldn’t HAVE to edit the XOrg config file just to change the monitor’s refresh rate, please, PLEASE tell me there’s some GUI utility coming with the new release coming next month.
That’s one of the reasons I liked SuSE was for YaST’s various GUI configuration tools. There’s YaST for debian that’s being worked on:
http://yast4debian.alioth.debian.org/
but I have no idea how far along that is.
Other than this small gripe, I have no other complaints.
(K)Ubuntu are both great and all but we shouldn’t HAVE to edit the XOrg config file just to change the monitor’s refresh rate, please, PLEASE tell me there’s some GUI utility coming with the new release coming next month.
System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution -> Refresh Rate
I think its been there since Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty). Or is it not displaying all the available refresh rates for you?
Or is it not displaying all the available refresh rates for you?
Well, I can’t speak for him, but personally, Ubuntu has never setted the correct refresh rate in my xorg.conf. The default VSync/HRefresh are quite conservative: they are flooring my monitor to 60Hz when it can do 100Hz easily. Removing both settings is doing the job since my monitor supports EDID.
Perhaps I should fill a bug report? I believe all the monitors made in the last 8 or 9 years are supporting EDID…
System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution -> Refresh Rate
I think its been there since Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty). Or is it not displaying all the available refresh rates for you?
Actually that does not help at all if you have a bad Xorg.conf. The biggest thing missing in Breezy is a graphical way to configure Xorg.conf. Its cool because a lot of other features are there.
I’m running Clearlooks Cairo. Main thing is to download and compile Cairo from CVS, don’t use stock one from Ubuntu repository. Speed does improve, still slugish, but much better. And as someone already said, this engine still doesn’t use Glitz. I’ve compiled Cairo with Glitz backend but Clearlooks doesn’t use it.
http://linux-blog.org/index.php?/archives/102-Whats-in-a-Name.html
Everyone is complaining about the term gay but Doxtater never said it meant “homosexual”. Gay also means happy FYI. The review didn’t imply that… you all did.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gay
n.
1. A person whose sexual orientation is to persons of the same sex.
2. A man whose sexual orientation is to men: an alliance of gays and lesbians.
Gay means happy when it used as an adjective never when its used as a name. This review clearly as homphobe and hater of it written all over it :
“Personally, I never really saw what everyone else saw, but then again I’m not one to follow trends. I’ve never been a follower and today is not the day I intend to start. I get the overwhelming impression that Ubuntu is the “flavor of the month” for some strange reason so I’ve strayed away from it for the most part to see if the hype would die down a bit. Good or bad, I don’t need to add to the hype. I review Linux distributions equally and if Ubuntu sucks raw eggs I’m going to tell it to you straight. Granted, I’ll get tons of “U SUK! UBUNTU R0x0rz” email (I know this from experience my friends), but the delete key works wonders on those most excellent pieces of entertainment. You’ve gotta love zealotry. You really do. ”
Then :
“The first time I reviewed this distro I was less than impressed.”
Then :
“When I reviewed Ubuntu 5.04 I felt that there really wasn’t anything special about it that would really warrant moving from a stock Debian distro to this one. What did it have to offer? As far as I was concerned? Not much at all. It was just another Debian-based distro that did little for me. ”
Another thing that irked me was the naming scheme they chose to use. I’ve got to admit it’s just short of scary. Those of you who read my 5.04 review will remember my concerns. For those of you who didn’t, here’s an excerpt:
“The first obstacle I had to get by was the naming the developers chose for their releases. I find it amazing that they’ve gotten so popular with such atrocious branding. This release (v5.04) is called “Hoary” or “Hoary Hedgehog”, which gives me the impression I need to whip out my wallet, pay for services rendered, and hit the confessional in the morning. Taken literally, it means ancient insect eating rodent. Is this any better? Not really. First things first… they need someone to seriously give them proper release names. The current stable release (v4.10) is dubbed “Warty”, which is another discussion entirely.”
BTW : “Taken literally, it means ancient insect eating rodent.” Is again pure insultive invention from himself .
Then he continues with :
“it was announced that the next release of Ubuntu would be named “Dapper Drake”… which I believe might translate directly to “gay duck”. Who knows. Either way, it’s just plain horrible. Supposedly it’s going to be direct competition for Microsoft Windows Vista. Name-wise… yes I’d say so. Both names are bad, but Ubuntu beats Microsoft hands down in the “name only a mother could love” category. ”
Developers make horrible marketing people. They really do. Good luck getting people to pick up “Dapper Drake” if it’s ever to sit next to Microsoft Windows on the shelf. There’s really a cold chance in hell a single unit will ever sell outside of geekdom. Just my two cents of course. Take it or leave it, but come one… “gay duck”? Their reasoning: “…It will get even more polish than we put into Breezy, so we think it deserves a name that reflects that polish”. If that’s the case, it sounds like they need to keep looking.
And finnaly :
“Still, the overwhelming community support for this distro lives on… so what’s going on? Was I missing something? Since we’re about a month away from their next major release I thought I might take a look.”
When I read is Gay Duck comment at first I brushed it off as another rant and laught at it real hard , but then after reading and discussing it with others the thing that made the most sense whas that he associated Drake with Gay because he seems to also have it in for Mandriva ( Mandrake ) and that there is actually a Dapper Duck. No one I talked to could ever logically explain how he cam up with Gay Duck from Dapper Drake , is explanation on it dont make sense at all either.
My opinion and personnal view , he need to give the Ubuntu people an apology. His rambling and personnal attacks where out of line and damaging to the Ubuntu project and even more to his reputation.