The ‘Hoary Hedgehog’ release of Ubuntu Linux is here, and the Free Agent likes what he sees.
Ubuntu Linux: Free and Fabulous
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Ubuntu is one of two Linux distributions I care for desktop wise (great update system, etc.), but it has one very big problem for me.
It won’t run on my hardware for more than 30 minutes to an hour without hardlocking. Yet, Solaris 10 x86, RedHat Enterprise Linux 3.0 WS, Windows XP, Fedora Core 3, FreeBSD 5.x, FreeBSD 4.9, and DragonFly BSD all work fine. MemTest86 runs for hours without any errors after completing all tests a few times over.
The developers seem perplex as to why this is happening, other than to guess it’s something with their Xorg server. I suspect a non-mainline kernel patch or a bug that other vendors have fixed that they have not is the source of the issue. My Sound card is detected but doesn’t work as well.
Very frustrating.
Ubuntu is a desktop system and the last thing Ubuntu needs are wizards or scripts to automatically set up various servers.
All in all it’s a nice review, I’ll just never understand why people skip the HTML anchor-tag and use javascript instead. However this is probably not the author’s fault.
I think it sounds pretty good, personally I’m going to probably stick with the normal windows-like mode (whatever it’s called, non-spatial?) but it doesn’t sound too bad, double middle clicking and you can keep the current folder open, sounds great.
Yes, I’ve run into the same sort of type problems with unbuntu.
Best bet for you is to download the vanilla kernel source and build it. I think their kernel patch set is borked. The only distro I’ve seen not bork a kernel up with their patches is gentoo, although I’m sure someone else has had a different experience than me.
i think its pretty easy to set up a server with ubuntu. just boot with “server” from the CD, it’ll install a base system and you’re ready to go. if you want hand-holding, perhaps you should use a more graphical server distro.
Why does everybody Ubuntu so much I tried it and it was buggy, had odd configurations, and was slow.
I really don’t understand why every runlevel is set to gui.
Does anyone know if…
With the Hoary release do they plan on mailing CD’s direct again? Will the original info be used or do you have to sign up again.
I put the Warty CD’s(20) on my counter at work and they were gone in days.. Now a guy heard about it and wanted one, yes I told him about downloading but he liked the pre-packaged.
The Ubuntu shipit site says Mid-April but were near end-April…
Any help appericated..
MrX
“Does anyone know if…
With the Hoary release do they plan on mailing CD’s direct again? Will the original info be used or do you have to sign up again. ”
Yes they do. I think you will have to update your info on the shipit pages.
Another review,
I have used Ubuntu for a long while than I though I would give pure Debian a try couldnt tell a difference between the two.
Install was the same, using synaptic to install programs.
The way I see it there is very little difference between the two’
im wondering which os the above kid is using!?
I have given Ubuntu a try, and all-in-all I like it very much.
My biggest complaint is that they chose Firefox as the default web browser. When operating within a Gnome environment, I much prefer Epiphany.
I could install Epiphany and uninstall Firefox. But, that’s not my point. My point is that the default should be Epiphany instead of Firefox.
Choosing Firefox over Epiphany is like choosing the “pretty” blonde over the brunette with character.
Quite disappointing, seriously.
>im wondering which os the above kid is using!?
A lot of badwords fo shizzle
I personally think Fedora Core and Ubuntu do basically the same thing, the only difference that Fedora has a better installer and was there first. I just don’t see the point of Ubuntu. Why exactly should I care if I already was happy with Fedora?
Choosing Firefox over Epiphany is like choosing the “pretty” blonde over the brunette with character.
Got something against pretty blondes?
Beside, firefox has enough character for my taste
The defaults are just fine like they are
i’m a happy ubuntu user since dec 2004. used to run debian and i also tried pretty much all major distro’s. the review is quite good and i share the author’s slight disappointment when it comes to ubuntu spatial mode…
what i really disliked about ubuntu spatial is it had no real testing and it was kinda “forced” into hoary one week before releasing. i easily reverted back with gconf-editor and i may add: you can also switch behaviour on-the-fly by Shift Double-Clicking the folder (easier for people with a 2button mouse).
anyway the distro is plain wonderful and has a great feel
PS: firefox as default browser makes perfect sense to me
Because Epiphany is a character doesn’t mean it *has* character.
First thing I did after installing Ubuntu was apt-geting Galeon. Maybe that’s because I was using KDE couple of years and it (Galeon) is much like Konqueror (with Gecko as rendering engine). That said now I think that Galeon is even better than Konqueror (in terms of usability).
Not very goot grammar? I’m sorry.
Essentially? .debs vs .rpms.
And, the six month release cycle with updates is an absoloute God send for me, both at work, where I can stick with one release for a while, and at home, where I can stay on the bleeding edge.
> Choosing Firefox over Epiphany is like choosing the “pretty”
> blonde over the brunette with character.
When Epiphany has the following Firefox plugins, I’ll consider it:
* Web Developer
* Flash Click
* Ad Block
* …(several other hundred plugins)
and is available on all platforms that I use (Linux/Windows/Solaris/Mac) with the same bookmark format. This last point is very important, because I use Thunderbird over Evolution for precisely the this reason. My data formats *must* be platform-independent.
Until all this happens, I’d consider “Epiphany” to be the “pretty” blonde and Firefox to be the brunette with character. Firefox satisfies my needs, Epiphany doesn’t.
Just switched from Mandrake to Ubuntu.
I don’t know, there is just some feeling around rpm-centered distributions that makes me feel insecure.
Probably traumas from old red hat and conectiva.
deb and apt-get just feels more reliable.
And I don’t have anything to complain about Ubuntu.
The best distro I have ever used.
Just curious, have you tried to run the hoary live CD on your machine, does it crash? Have you tried to remove your sound card?
I like having Firefox as default, or would be happy with mozilla. It doesn’t matter, I always end up installing the latest firefox or mozilla of my choice.
I also don’t care for evolution email program, again here I prefer to install myself and run thunderbird or mozilla.
Because ubuntu is free, they are unable to ship it with commonly needed browser plugins and users have to spend some time to set it up.
I don’t really see the point in using epiphany, perhaps someone can enlighten me here.
The Hoary live CD works very great on my computer. I lended it to a friend and he had a great satisfaction, even if Gnome was slowish because of his CPU.
But on another friend’s computer the mouse won’t work (serial). It’s the only bad point I found.
Fedora Core, if you’re happy with it keep on using it!
I used fedora before I switched to ubuntu, the main reasons for me switching were:
1) update problems with fedora/yum. ubuntu and apt/synaptic have been fabulous.
2) single CD for ubuntu, multiple CD’s with fedora.
3) responsive developers: I filed several bugs with fedora that were either ignored or sometimes closed out without being fixed. With ubuntu I found that the developers were really accessible and responsive to bugzilla reports.
4) stability: ubuntu releases every 6 months and will support a release for at least 18 months. Fedora drops support as soon as they can, I had many instances where my fedora systems became broken, things were just a little too bleeding edge for my taste.
I still like fedora and appreciate the contributions that the redhat team makes to open source.
That happens with me when I’m using the 2.6.11 kernel. I’ve tried diferent Ubuntu Kernels (386, 686, k7) and compiling it myself (with a .config that works 100% with other kernel versions), and it just doesn’t work. Almost every time I log on to GNOME the laptop crashes, sometimes it crashes after a while or when I turn off the computer.
If it happens while turning off I can see the message “ayee! killing interrupt handler!” or something like that…
Right now I’m using 2.6.10 without any problems.
I wonder if it is a kernel or ubuntu problem…
It looks like a kernel problem, but I’ll send a bug report to the ubuntu list soon to see what they say.
If you have a PowerPC (Mac), Ubuntu is really great. I tried both YDL 4, and Ubuntu. Ubuntu was clearly better. In fact, I found YDL 4 to be a big step back from YDL 3. It’s rather strange considering YDL is supposed to be based on Fedora Core. I run FC3 on my Opteron, and YDL4 is nothing like it. I’m still waiting for the OFFICIAL Fedora Core for PPC. Right now, FC for PPC requires you to jump through hoops to install it. Once it is as easy to install as the x86 version, I’m switching my iMac to Fedora.
Has anyone noticed that the the command “useradd” does not work properly? but has been replaced with “adduser” also I noiced that the GUI for adding users also does not function properly. I have 2 boxes running Ubuntu and both failed to add “home directories” to /home I have used many distros and this is the first i have come across the “adduser” command. It’s no big deal but it did through me off a bit.
Let me clarify the “useradd” command does not function correctly as well as the gui. However the “adduser” command works pervectly fine. I’ve just never seen it before. Like when distros swiched the cdrom drives to /media instead of /mnt. Will adduser be the new “standard”
I think it sounds pretty good, personally I’m going to probably stick with the normal windows-like mode (whatever it’s called, non-spatial?) but it doesn’t sound too bad, double middle clicking and you can keep the current folder open, sounds great.
The problem is that many people, doesn’t have a middle button. Sure you can emulate them by clicking both buttons or you hold down the shift key but neither is something a newbie would figure out.
If they don’t figurre out how to do this they will have troube doing things like copying files. You also have the problem with consistensy, if it looks like Gnome, users will expect it to work like Gnome.
This is why the standard Gnome way is to be preffered especially as newbies have a tendency not to create deep structures, and if they do there is navigational mode. By using that you avoid the current nervous dancing windows behavior that basically is navigational mode without the possibility to navigate.
It’s no wonder there are so many negative comments in the Ubunto bugzilla.
3) responsive developers: I filed several bugs with fedora that were either ignored or sometimes closed out without being fixed. With ubuntu I found that the developers were really accessible and responsive to bugzilla reports.
You, mean like half the world, is urging them to fix the spatial nautilus bug, but nothing is seams to happen.
The problem is that many people, doesn’t have a middle button.
That’s not really a problem, because you don’t even have to use 3-button emulation, you can just ctrl-click too (like you would emulate a right click on a mac).
Of course “Ubuntu spatial” sucks, but that’s because it returns unexpected behaviour and should never have been chosen as the default setting. The mouse buttons are not the problem.
Just use gconf to configure nautilus to do things the way you like. It’s not hard.
>> I really don’t understand why every runlevel is set to gui.
Because that’s the way Debian does it. The reasoning being, IIRC, that you can start any service you like or not in MU, regardless of runlevel. So why use runlevels? Just stop your DM or crond or whatever daemon pains you. Init 3 is not much more sensible than /etc/init.d/gdm stop. OTOH you have to stop individual daemons if you want GUI but no NFS anyway.
@ZEROCOOL HACKER EXTRORDINAIRE
No, the point is that Ubuntu’s implementation of Spatial Nautilus seems to be broken. Debian’s Spatial Nautilus is working just as expected.
Choosing Firefox over Epiphany is like choosing the “pretty” blonde over the brunette with character.
Hey! I am marrying my pretty blonde fiancée this summer, and she got more character than you or your web browser ever had or will have. Just because blondes have a “bad” reputation doesn’t mean that all blondes are stupid och plastic. Come to Sweden and experience some real women
Mostly positive experience to report from the PowerPC side. Ubuntu went onto a Pismo Powerbook without any trouble and works like a charm. My little personal minor-issue-list:
1.) Ubuntu expects the chip clock to be UTC. For MacOS I needed CEST. One-liner-change somewhere in /etc that took a while to figure out.
2.) Odd spatial behaviour. Not with a diehard MacOS 9 user. I figured out that it had a switch in GConf, but was somewhat disturbed they didn’t make it a regular preference.
3.) Video is too slow on G3/400. GStreamer stuff looks broken, Xine is dropping frames, and mplayer seems to come off the binary source I found only in G4-flavour.
4.) Having no network connected slows the boot.
5.) Anjuta 1 didn’t get along with the supplied autotools out of the box. But then, who ever did?
Other than that, it just worked. Mounts, Sleep, Battery Handling, Powerbook buttons. I didn’t yet look into specifics of Java and/or Flash support with PPC, though. And I think the sudo way of doing system things is strange, but no more so than OS X’s. The way of putting places into the taskbars seems odd at first, too, but proves to be a rather sensible choice.
I run Mdk^Hv on my x86s, and in comparion I felt Ubuntu does less (regarding the number of Drak*lets), but it’s more reliable and predictable at what it does.
It boots up faster than FC3.
It’s Human GUI theme is slick.
Applications run faster than FC3.
It consumes less memory.
I have installed Opera 8.0, Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0, Helix Player 10, VMware Workstation 5.0, XMMS, mplayer.
They all work nicely.
The only thing it doesn’t do nicely is hibernating. After resuming from hibernation, my sound output is gone. Too bad.
I can’t run Ubuntu. The installation went fine on my Dell Latitude 110L but it could not load the graphics after restart. The screen was blank. I heard sounds as if it was there, I just couldn’t see it.
I’m new to Linux so I have no clue how to fix that. Guess I will have to continue to use Windows until they fix the blank screen issue.
Just curious, have you tried to run the hoary live CD on your machine, does it crash? Have you tried to remove your sound card?
Let me get this straight. I’m supposed to remove my sound card to help troubleshoot one OS that doesn’t work out of at least five different ones that do work? No thanks. Ubuntu’s last test release had this problem too, I reported the bug several months ago. I must say that I don’t remember the very first time I tried Ubuntu having this issue.
“Why exactly should I care if I already was happy with Fedora?”
Simple ….. there is too much bloat in Fedora.
“I’m new to Linux so I have no clue how to fix that. Guess I will have to continue to use Windows until they fix the blank screen issue.”
I highly doubt that your blank screen issue has anything to do with something “they” can fix but probably misconfigured settings somewhere.
> Let me get this straight. I’m supposed to remove my sound
> card to help troubleshoot one OS that doesn’t work out
His advice does seem to be odd. Personally, I’ve had problems with sound too and the solution was simple (but tedious). Open up the sound volume configuration (in the media apps menu) and turn the volumn up on all sound systems that you have installed. For audio recording, I needed to raise the volumn on a few sound components that are not listed by default (see the “Settings” menu). I’ve had similar issues with Fedora before, so it’s not a distribution-specific issue.
Good Luck!
Just use gconf to configure nautilus to do things the way you like. It’s not hard.
No, its not hard if you know how to do it. The problem is that a newbie don’t. A more experienced Gnome user would probably guess that could be changed by some gconf key. But even so, there are a lot of them, and he may give up instead of actually trying to find the correct one.
The standard answer “you can configure it” is not good enough if you are addressing the general public. Good defaults are everything.
I use UbuntuLinux but I really am waiting for UbuntuBSD
I second galeon. I never thought I’d leave ff but when I went to gnome, a couple of things stood out. 1) ff has no proper session support. 2) Proper theme intergration. 3) I’ve always had flash slowdowns with certain types of flash in linux when using firefox or mozilla.
I read that this was a gtk2 bug, but when I investigated further I found it’s an issue with the xul overhead that ff/mozilla has. Galeon/epiphany do not have this. But they all use gecko so it’s all good.
And I prefer galeon over epiphany as it has more features. I found epiphany too streamlined.
Ubuntu I am sure it is a great distro, but I cannot in any way get it to recognise a mouse. On the same systems I can run SUSE (ok but keeps losing programs) Xandros, excellent but at high resolutions the screen is unreadable, Fedora (cannot recognize 2 identical drives) etc. At least I can instal them, try that with no mouse.