“While this release isn’t perfect, it’s very, very good. I’ve tried a lot of Linux distributions over the years, and Ubuntu is definitely one of the best. If you’re already using Ubuntu, the new release is worth the upgrade. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu yet, the Breezy release would be a good time to check in and see what all the fuss is about. It’s one of the easiest Linux distros to install, and should serve newbies and Linux gurus well.”
Review: Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger
90 Comments
I’ve used windows forever. Done Programming on both sides of the fence…DotNet, VB, Perl, etc. I run XP on my laptop and FreeBSD on my servers.
I’ve always disliked Linux in favour of FreeBSD. After attending the Ohio Linuxfest this month and snagging a few Ubuntu CDs, I’m a complete convert on my laptop. I’ve been running it for 5 days now, and I only boot XP to run tests on my CPAN modules during development.
Ubuntu is without a doubt the friendliest ‘just works’
Linux distro I’ve ever tried, especially on a laptop wth wireless. On top of that, I’ve always been a KDE person, but Gnome on Ubuntu is clean and simple.
I don’t see me using any nother distro, or even XP full time on the laptop again. That’s saying something coming from a mostly XP user.
i tried several ubuntu releases and found that Mepis gives a lot more ‘out of the box’ experience.
out of the box, without installing any package:
i could play mp3, watch divx, burn cds, read pdf, watch realmedia, read my win drives, talk with skype, use nvidiatools, set dualhead with a gui…
a nice debian, much ‘cooler’ than ubu imho.
I am saying that as a Unix/Linux professional you do not choose a linux distro based on what you like. You choose the distro based on what the application vendor supports. Therefore, it does not matter what OS you like, if Oracle or some other professional, enterprise, real linux admin looks over, does not support it, you do not use it! Period! Stating that someone chooses to use Ubuntu, Suse, Redhat, etc, does not make you any less of a knowledgable, power user, whatever you want to call it than if you chose to use INSERT_YOUR_DISTRO_HERE.
Sorry for busting chops here. I guess Ubuntu may be good for i386 but thats about it. I have AMD64 and half of the instructions on ubuntu faq does not hold true. I gave up finally after wasting my weekend on installing it.
The same is true for Gentoo/VLOS I don’t know how these people dare to release something that would not even install the first time on amd64 architecture.
I am using NLD 9 and been quite impressed by it so far. and the best thing every thing including the kernel is a piece of cake to compile.
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2005-10-11 8:45 pm
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2005-10-11 9:06 pmAnonymous
I know they were working towards getting the AMD64 version of Ubuntu to where it’s as usable as 32bit ubuntu (mplayer, flash, etc). Anyone know where they stand?
I tried Ubuntu 5.04/64 bit and I was pretty disappointed with it.
The same is true for Gentoo/VLOS I don’t know how these people dare to release something that would not even install the first time on amd64 architecture.
The processor isn’t the problem,the obstacle is mostly the motherboards chipset.If it’s *nvidia* based you can install allmost anything.
Good grief.
What the heck is it with comparing Ubuntu to Gentoo? They’re designed for different kinds of users.
I love Gentoo, but in NO WAY would I recommend it to anyone who wants a just-works system (for that I recommend- get this- Ubuntu!), and certainly not to the Slackware guy who assumed Gentoo would be just like Slackware. Gentoo is about fine(r) control of what’s installed on your system and what it does.
Basically, there are three ways to do system management: Have the system detect and autoconfigure as much as possible (Ubuntu, Knoppix), Let the user configure the system exactly to their specifications (Gentoo), fine-tune some things and hope it works (well, MacOS X is closest, given the limited and controlled hardware). I suppose there’s a fourth way; configure some things, assume it works, and leave it to users third parties to work around your mess (Windows)
i leave a selection of ubuntu disks (A64/PPC/386) on the front desk of the IT-training charity i consult to, and have done for the two extant releases to date.
I use SUSE myself, but Ubuntu is great, and free, and as long as it remains so i will continue to distribute copies as a public service.
Once you get tired of the constant upkeep Gentoo requires, Ubuntu is a very nice alternative.
You might try FreeBSD as well ๐
Both FreeBSD and Gentoo don’t need more “upkeep” than any
other OS or distro.
Don’t you need security updates when you run Ubuntu?
Gentoo doesn’t need constant “upkeep” exept for security updates you don’t have to upgrade anything if you don’t have/want to.
If it’s not broken don’t touch it.
It’s when people come into trouble when they take more than there skills can possibly handle.Once properly installed via the non-nonsence,good documentation you can easily have a stable and fast system for years.
I was a hard core gentoo user for a good year or so, and it’s a great tool to learn by. However, I found ubuntu to “just work” and frankly could find no difference in performance over a tweaked gentoo system and the packages database was more robust than whatever builds gentoo had out there..
I’ve been toying with this on my play box and it does seem to be very nicely done. I’ve no major complaints WRT stability or general usability, or availability of features.
The only thing I wish they would do (it’s not gonna happen but whatever) is to relase one CD per supported architchture instead of two. Make these live CDs, with the installer as an option (in a fashion similar to how DragonFly CDs work). I’ve read somewhere on their site that they plan to do such a thing with thier DVD releases, but it will default to installer. You’d have to tell it upon booting up that you want to use it as a live filesystem.
IMO that is rather backwards as I can see that people would be booting into a live CD for various reasons far more often than they would be booting into an installer. System troubles? Why reinstall when you have a full set of tools available on a live CD? Reinstalling is more often than not a last resort option, so why they will be defaulting to the installer instead of the live filesystem is beyond me.
Other than that, nice job.
There’s one major bug that has not yet been fixed as of the RC, and I’m very concerned that it’ll make it into the final release. I am unable to mount floppy disks through Nautilus, pure and simple. Attempting to do so gives me a “given UDI is not a mountable volume” error message.
The only workaround is to mount the drive from a terminal. While this doesn’t annoy me personally as experienced GNU/Linux user, this prevents me from installing Ubuntu on my mom’s computer, which is exactly their target. She should not have to know what a terminal is, a command line would kill her (well, kill the computer, more likely).
I have a lot of respect for the Ubuntu project, but how can such a critical issue go unnoticed?
As a Linux newbie, I decided when I bought my laptop 2 months ago that I would use it as a testing station to play with Linux, and see if I could do without Windows.
I tried all the distros I could dl that would be reasonably easy to install (Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu and more…) and overall, Ubuntu/Kubuntu 5.4 was the one that worked best (I found out I preferred Kde over Gnome).
However, there were still several issues I was hesitant about, mostly related to hardware support, especially since a lot of things were very hard to get working (again, I was a Linux newbie).
Basic installation would work fine, up until the start of X. Then I would get a black screen and … nothing. I figured out how to fix it, and the sustem would work well enough, with some minor glitches.
Anyway, I was eager to try out Breezy as soon as it came out. I DLd it within hours of it becoming available, and installed it right away.
And it worked perfectly, from the get-go. Screen display recognized my 1280*720 monitor without having to ask (first distro that does that with me), sound works (unlike Fedora) and network works (unlike SuSe).
So far, everything I tried has worked flawlessly.
Now I can proceed with the experiment of becoming a full Linux user.
In summary, as a newbie Linux user, on a reasonably new laptop, Kubuntu does it for me.
“While this release isn’t perfect, it’s very, very good. I’ve tried a lot of Linux distributions over the years, and $MY_DISTRO is definitely one of the best. If you’re already using $MY_DISTRO, the new release is worth the upgrade. If you haven’t tried $MY_DISTRO yet, the $LATEST release would be a good time to check in and see what all the fuss is about. It’s one of the easiest Linux distros to install, and should serve newbies and Linux gurus well.”
Except for the fact that it’s true for Ubuntu.
Note to self: Buy more MS stock.
Ok, at least I wasn’t the only one thinking that. Pretty much everything the article says can be said about most every distro of the past year. Entirely pointless review.
I tell you: This is a very very good distribution!
babu
I never found the osnews interface intuitive, but this time I’m really at a loss. How can I check the review, where is the link?
click the “one of the best” hyperlink
Just because Ubuntu is the most popular distro at this moment doesn’t mean it’s the best.
> …and should serve newbies and Linux gurus well.
Newbies ok, but newbies using Ubuntu that become gurus will find themselves move to Slackware or Gentoo in a matter of time, it’s much more flexible, much more customizable.
I’ve tested all Ubuntu distro’s from Warty to Breezy and I didn’t like it at all, I don’t like the debian package managment, I don’t like the Ubuntu customized kernel, I want to built my own one from an unmodified source like slackware has.
With Ubuntu everything has already been done for you and optimized in a way they think is good.
“Newbies ok, but newbies using Ubuntu that become gurus will find themselves move to Slackware or Gentoo in a matter of time, it’s much more flexible, much more customizable.”
For example?
“I’ve tested all Ubuntu distro’s from Warty to Breezy and I didn’t like it at all, I don’t like the debian package managment, I don’t like the Ubuntu customized kernel, I want to built my own one from an unmodified source like slackware has.”
Then build your own kernel. Who’s stopping you?
And what’s wrong with debian package management?
>Then build your own kernel. Who’s stopping you?
I tried in Ubuntu, but it misses all the pacakages needed to do so like ncurses so before I could start doing that I had to download a whole bunch of packages and their dependencies and that took me quite some time.
After building the kernel the same way as I do on Slack (Downloading the newest from kernel.org) I came across a lot of errors (not major ones ok) after booting it which I had to spend quite some time on to fix.
I don’t know the Ubuntu/Debian system, of course that is true, but I use slack for years now always building my own kernel and I never came across all these problems i’ve had with Ubuntu, not even when I used slack the first time.
>And what’s wrong with debian package management?
I don’t know I just like slackware’s tgz more.
I don’t like editing the apt sources list everytime I need special or experimental packages.
I just want to add packages using one single command, like pkg_add on bsd or installpkg on slack.
That Synaptic package manager really sucks, I never get it working the way I want.
But then again, like I said I don’t know very much of Debian nor Ubuntu so it could be me but all my impressions of Ubuntu were bad, It’s hard to explain, when I’m working with it it just doesn’t feel right.
This is all personal, I should have mentioned that in my first reply.
“I tried in Ubuntu, but it misses all the pacakages needed to do so like ncurses so before I could start doing that I had to download a whole bunch of packages and their dependencies and that took me quite some time.”
apt-get build-dep linux-image
“But then again, like I said I don’t know very much of Debian nor Ubuntu so it could be me but all my impressions of Ubuntu were bad, It’s hard to explain, when I’m working with it it just doesn’t feel right.”
I think that’s a valid reason not to use something, but I don’t think you should base broad claims about something on this feeling.
OK.. So it’s ok to make broad claims if you like it, but not if you dont?
Umm, you know that Linus says not to use kernel.org kernels because they are ussually broken in subtle ways. What exactly is wrong with the kernels Ubuntu ships? Are they in some way broken? Or is this one of those things that you have always done your way and you will always do it your way, logic be damned?
Honestly, there is very little reason to build your own kernel unless your doing kernel development, in which case I would expect you to know how to build a kerenel environment. Oh, I would also expect you to know that all those errors are because the kernel.org kernel is broken and not because of Ubuntu. Back in the day a “stable” kernel was stable, but not so anymore.
I never had any broken kernels from kernel.org?
Why would they release kernels there when they would be broken?
Ok, the RC-releases might not compile, but I never had any problems with the stable ones.
I have very good reasons to built my own kernel, I want to optimize it for the system i’m using, for example my Pentium-M notebook, or my AMD Desktop computer.
Most kernels are compiled for standard systems and include a lot of options I don’t want / need, so why wast performance on those options?
I think you’re wrong about what Linus says, I think he says not to use the RC release, but the stables are fine.
“I have very good reasons to built my own kernel, I want to optimize it for the system i’m using, for example my Pentium-M notebook, or my AMD Desktop computer.”
If that is your logic… debian and of course ubuntu include a fairly decent system for building your own kernels. Using this system your kernel can be built using the same patches the default ubuntu kernel includes… In addition, it builds a package that you can then install…
(I would give more details but I am at work, search the forums or something)
I think you’re wrong about what Linus says, I think he says not to use the RC release, but the stables are fine.
Eh? I thought linus made all the pre-release versions of the kernel rc’s because he wanted more people to use them and find the bugs. That and because he couldn’t decide where the change between pre and rc should be. If you really want a stable kernel from kernel.org then you should wait for at least the 2.6.x.2 releases.
Well, I’m a Linux sysadmin and I use Ubuntu. There are some people that would love to edit config files all day or spend days compiling the latest stuff, but most people – even the greatest Linux experts – would rather not deal with that. Things like automatic hardware dectection and configuration are progress. Things like package management solutions are progress. You get less control when you don’t do things manually, but there is so much you have to do manually and most people would like something that just works rather than having their computer in a perpetual configuration alpha.
This comes down to a debate of how much do you want to build vs. how much that already is built do you want to use and then just make small tweaks. This can be taken to all kinds of extremes. Writing my own kernel would allow a lot more customization than using the Linux kernel, but it would be a pain, take a lot of time, be less reliable. . . Not using a system like Gentoo’s Ebuilds would give me even greater control than Ebuilds offers. How much crap do you want to do yourself and how much will you just reuse other people’s work? Even most gurus will probably want to reuse more than you’re willing to admit.
With Ubuntu everything has already been done for you and optimized in a way they think is good.
Which is _EXACTLY_ why I dumped Gentoo, after five years of doing my own optimizing, in favour of Ubuntu.
Gentoo is great if you have special needs, or just want a system to learn from. If you don’t, Ubuntu serves it purpose.
After five years of Gentoo I learned enough to understand that I don’t need a customized kernel.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Gentoo, but I just don’t have the time. I think that if Ubuntu newbies move to Slackware or Gentoo when they become gurus I think they’ll come back to Ubuntu when they’ve became enlightend gurus. ;-P
I agree, Gentoo is great for learning. The documentation is excellent and the forums are very helpful. Once you get tired of the constant upkeep Gentoo requires, Ubuntu is a very nice alternative.
“Newbies ok, but newbies using Ubuntu that become gurus will find themselves move to Slackware or Gentoo in a matter of time, it’s much more flexible, much more customizable.”
How so? You need to back up that nonsense.
“I’ve tested all Ubuntu distro’s from Warty to Breezy and I didn’t like it at all, I don’t like the debian package managment, I don’t like the Ubuntu customized kernel, I want to built my own one from an unmodified source like slackware has.”
Package managemt is subjective, but how can you prattle on like this and then say something so ignorant as the last part of that statement? I have a Kubuntu box with a vanilla kernel and the ck patchset. It’s easy to roll your own kernel, and if you weren’t just regurgitating rhetoric, you’d KNOW that.
People have a love/hate relationship with Ubuntu, it seems. I tend to think that those who love it do so because they’ve used it and found it to suit their needs, and a good portion of those who hate it do so because it’s the flavour of the week. I may be way off base here, though, so take that with a grain of salt, and not as a troll.
If you’re looking for a killer feature to make Ubuntu standout, you’ll be disappointed. It’s a culmination of many little things that give Ubuntu it’s edge. I personally use GoboLinux on my main system, but I do like Ubuntu quite a bit. And so does my mom, who won’t use anything else, now.
Newbies ok, but newbies using Ubuntu that become gurus will find themselves move to Slackware or Gentoo in a matter of time, it’s much more flexible, much more customizable.
Bzzz. Wrong. Try again noob. Non-newbies were done dicking with their systems years ago. They just wanna get work done now. Slack and the ricer distro is more for the medium-noob who thinks he’ll be uber-hardcore by running those two.
Ok, so it was under “one of the best”… Great!
Could the people at osnews please, please use a convention for their links, like “link”.
We would not need to hunt down the links in the post to find the subject of the post.
and could osnews underline their link, and maybe change the color too ? </sarcasm>
I agree, I sometimes open one of the links in a new tab and close the main osnews window only to find out it was not the link to the article. The title should always be the link
but IMHO , the link should be at the end and besides there are usually two to three links for each story and you usually need to hover each one of them to guess which one leads to the story .
The simple and logical method for ensuring links are legible is to make them meaningful when indexed. Ie, if I were to make an index of the links in the article up there, they’d look like this:
* Thom Holwerda
* ankitmalik
* one of the best
* Ubuntu
The first two, and the last, make sense. Obviously Thom Holwerda is a link to email the guy or to a page about him. The second link is obscure because the nickname is obscure; not much to be done. The fourth is obviously a link to Ubuntu; probably ubuntu.com. I can tell these without hovering them and checking my status bar. However, what is the third one? “one of the best”? I assume it’s the review, because by process of elimination, it must be. But it’s not clear.
Wouldn’t it be more sensible to have the word “review” in that link? Like “review of Breezy” or something? Even making the title, where it says “Review: Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger” clickable would be a good option.
Still, seems like people are overreacting a bit, eh?
The second link is obscure because the nickname is obscure; not much to be done
That is not a nickname – that is my actual name if you dont mind!
Ankit Malik
Still, seems like people are overreacting a bit, eh?
Not over reacting actually. Did you figure out we were jumping and howling when we typed our opinions. We were just requesting to make it more easier/faster to figure out the link.
Have I missed something or has 5.10 not been officially released yet? I checked the Ubuntu site and only saw the Preview release for download.
That is the nature of reviews of any Operating System, (well, really a review of anything from sculpture to restauarants) is that regardless of the technical merits of the subject of review, it really comes down to subejective experience. What’s easy for one person is a pain in the neck for someone else and so on and so forth. For every person that will write – sincerely I might add – that the OS they use is the best in the land, there will be as many sincere horror stories that is the worst. One experience is no valid than the other really, but the only way to know whether something is good for you, is to try it. Obvious truism but there you are. Having said that, reviews are a good way of helping to draw up a short list of distros (or whatever else)you may want to try, for whatever reason, so they serve a purpose of sorts.
if i’ve ever read a negative distro review posted here. I think its been a while.
I use ubuntu every day and think its great, but it still has its flaws. I’m hoping some of these are cleared up with breezy, like the lack of decent samba admin or a decent alternative colour scheme. I don’t mind human, but few people seem to detest it.
Dave
Dave said, “if i’ve ever read a negative distro review posted here. I think its been a while”
1) Linux is starting to get its shit together. It’s getting harder to find completely half baked buggy software that’s not marked as a “beta”.
2) To give a scathing review, no matter how richly deserved is to invite a metric truckload of hate mail.
It’s been 2 years and I *still* get “how dare you!” mail for calling YDL 3.0 a mediocre distro. Go figure.
“if i’ve ever read a negative distro review posted here. I think its been a while.”
Well, that’s because nobody’s going to spend ages testing and then writing a review about a rubbish distro. You don’t see reviews of Foolix 0.51RC4 because it’s crap. You DO see reviews of SUSE, Ubuntu et al., because they’re good (well, pretty good for the most part!).
If you want to address the balance, find some crap distros and review them. But don’t complain when hardly anyone reads the review — because they want to hear about GOOD distros and what’s going on with them.
Dave:
The color scheme in GNOME has always been easy to change. Right click the desktop and choose the background option. On that screen there’s a color wheel at the bottom. In addition to choosing color changes you can select a gradient from dark to light and between two colors, etc.
I installed breezy when the rc was out and I completly love it, much faster the the dev releases.
the deb package managment isn’t the best one but it is powerful and simple. so for this kind of disto that is trying to brake in to the workstation market and fast it is perfect.
But disto flavour is like assholes everybody has…. ๐
Ubuntu isn’t perfect for everybody but it’s the one I recommend to my windows friends to try out since almost everything work “out of the box” adn is simple.
Even those who use slack or gentoo (I have) can find some great things with breezy.
Ubuntu, the distro for the user that wants Windows but doesn’t want to pay for it.
Ubuntu, the distro for the user that wants Windows but doesn’t want to pay for it.
As an Ubuntu user, I take that as an insult.
Ubuntu, the distro for the user that wants Windows but doesn’t want to pay for it.
Nonsense that is linspire or Xandros and you know it.
Ubuntu is almost the opposite of the windows look a like distros keeping most of the default Gnome environment with its odd blend of Mac OS 9 and Windows behaviors in place.
I understand Ubuntu was the hot thing for the moment so its fashionable and trendy to poo-poo it.
There are other reasons to crack on Ubuntu like the CLI install and the too ugly for words color defaults (no not a fan of blue desktops but there are better ways to blend earth colors, period). You can even crack that it does not include any real server admin tools confining one to either stay with a desktop config or go to the command line for most server configs.
But … windows look-a-like?? Silly and inane and totally uneducated response.
I like Gnome, prefer the apt-get package management via synaptic, the blend of non-distro specific (for the most) admin tools and the inclusion of the linux-restricted modules. That last part allows me to live with Ubuntu without having to re-compile my madwifi support for every new kernel release.
But that is just me. There are plenty of very valid reasons to use other distros.
However, that does not excuse a completely unwarranted and unreasonable remark like the one you made.
You want a gnome windows look-a-like try RH 8 or Sun’s Java Desktop. Ubuntu ain’t it.
I said nothing about a look alike.
It’s more of an “acts like”
Would you please stop this ubuntu up – ubuntu down hype? For crying out low, there’s no day give by god without ubuntu being linked here.Always by the same person.Expand your horizon.There’s something else,you know.
Would you please stop this ubuntu up – ubuntu down hype? For crying out low, there’s no day give by god without ubuntu being linked here.Always by the same person.Expand your horizon.There’s something else,you know.
We report on the major distros only when it comes to newsitems, since if you want news about any of the other 300 minor distros, there’s distrowatch to follow. We’re OSNews, not DistroNews. If a smaller distro does interesting stuff (like Komodo, or that one with the Mezzo desktop, the name slipped my mind), it will get attention too.
As for reviews, the distro in question isn’t important. If you want a review of a smaller or other distro, nobody is stopping you from taking up the pen and write one.
I cannot help it that Ubuntu is all the hype at this point. If you have personal issues with Ubuntu, then just ignore any items about it. I don’t see the big deal.
Could the people at osnews please, please use a convention for their links, like “link”.
We would not need to hunt down the links in the post to find the subject of the post.
This will not change. As it is now, it gives the teasers a better flow.
I think the point was not that you shouldn’t report on reviews of major distros, but that having posted several reviews of the same distro already, further reviews are redundant, and divert attention away from other stories that deserve attention.
This is particularly the case with Linux distros (as opposed to reviews of full operating systems) as the differences tend to be quite minor, and the reviews tend to dwell on the things in common, such descriptions of the latest versions of Gnome and/or KDE included in that distro and all others released around the same time.
Oh,gimme a break.Nobody said you should “watch” all distros is just the fact that you became predictable and boring. And please,don’t hide after that silly remark that I might have something with Ubuntu.These kind of comments and repeatedly pushing something into somebodys face will end eventually in hate for that something.
Using your super-flawless logic I may think that this is actually what you are after.
Indeed , is not a big deal,here you are spot on.
And please,don’t hide after that silly remark that I might have something with Ubuntu.These kind of comments and repeatedly pushing something into somebodys face will end eventually in hate for that something.
Now look, this news got submitted to OSNews, and it’s a review of one of the most succesful Linux distributions. Do you want me to ignore all that because Budd doesn’t like it when Ubuntu gets attention?
In the past 7 days there have been exactly 3 items on Ubuntu, of which one is a review, and two release announcements. 3 out of 65 items. That’s 4.61%. If that is too much Ubuntu for you, than that’s you’re problem, not mine.
We report on the major distros only when it comes to newsitems, since if you want news about any of the other 300 minor distros, there’s distrowatch to follow. We’re OSNews, not DistroNews. If a smaller distro does interesting stuff (like Komodo, or that one with the Mezzo desktop, the name slipped my mind), it will get attention too.
The Mezzo desktop is developed by SymphonyOS:
http://www.symphonyos.com
It’s available for Debian systems through apt-get; add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://archive.progeny.com/symphonyos/apt/ ./
How did the author manage to review a product that hasn’t shipped yet? I’d love to have a go on his time-machine, I could review SuSE 10.1 and tell everyone what it’s like.
Yes, yes, I know, he’s reviewed the preview release, but things can change between the preview and the actual release, so calling this a review of Ubuntu 5.10 is disengenuous.
Do it. You can download the images from opensuse.org. You can tell us what we can expect from SUSE 10.1.
I installed the alpha on my laptop without any issue. But I have been busy playing with SUSE 10 (my fav) on my workstation. Maybe if I get back to my laptop I can offer some insight into suse 10.1 (alpha) as well.
Read my comment again, particularly the second paragraph. I stated that things change between pre-releases and releases, so reviewing a product based on a pre-release instead of the actual release is disengenous.
I explictly chose SuSE 10.1 as an example, as expecting a three month old alpha to give a full picture of a product with at least six months of active development left would be an spectacular exercise in futility.
Not perfect, but then no Linux distro is perfect. If it were, there wouldn’t be a need for the others ๐
Seriously, I’ve been a Debian user for about 2 1/2 years now, and I’ve used many other distro’s including Slackware before that. Right now I’m running Sarge on my server, and Testing on my workstation (the machine I’m posting from now). On my notebook though, I decided to try out Ubuntu. I installed Hoary Hedgehog (5.04) alongside Windows XP in a dual-boot configuration. After a few days of getting used to the subtle differences between Ubuntu and vanilla Debian, I decided to go for the gusto, so I changed my apt sources to point to the “Breezy Badger” (5.10) preview release and did an apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. It took about an hour to download and install all the upgraded packages, but so far I like it.
While I probably won’t forsake vanilla Debian for Ubuntu, I do have to give Props to the Ubuntu team for doing such a fine job!
i found this article interesting
http://liquidat.blogspot.com/
After my switch from Fedora Core to SUSE LINUX I thought a while about the future development of these two distributions.
It is obvious that SUSE has to go a way now which is behind Fedora now – the way from a “closed” distribution to a community distribution with open build servers and all the stuff.
It will be a hard way with a lot of discussions, but it will work.
The aim is clear: to build up a Linux Distribution for everyone with a focus on desktop for normal users, too.
The technical direction is clear, too: there will be the equal support of both desktops, KDE and GNOME, with a focus on developing software which bases on the mono framework.
Sometimes I am a bit afraid that SUSE will neglect KDE a little bit because of the heavy influence of the GNOME developers inside of Novell, but at the moment everything looks like a equal software support.
But what about Fedora Core? Fedora Core is a community distribution with a clear community now in the background. The aims are clear, too: Enterprise Server and Enterprise Dekstop/Workstation, also a desktop for developers. The development in the near future will not change very much, although it will form some new structures in the new foundation.
But Feodara Core has some problems when it comes to the used technics: Fedora Core is GNOME based now, and that will not change very soon: all configuration tools are gnome based. Sure, KDE is officially supported, but if you have a closer look at this support it is not very serious.
If you now have a closer look at the actual gnome development you will see a large influence of the mono-people: much of the actual development is done at applications which are based on the mono technic, and some new and shine apps like f-spot, beagle, dashboard, muine and blam are mono-based, too.
And if ifolder will spread enough to become a new standard we will have another mono-based application.
The problem for Fedora Core is now that they can’t implement Mono support because of their own strict rules. Mono has no clear situation about possible patent violations because the idea behind it comes from Microsoft, and they have some patents around this technics (and will use them against the Open Source Community when the time comes).
To focus on one example: Fedora Core will not implement a desktop search machine: kat is too kde-based, and beagle is mono based and so unuseable.
So Fedora Core will have a lack in this killer app field. Another example is foto management: it looks like that the most people are looking at f-spot now: it develops very fast and is quite nice. KDE has digikam, which is alsmost perfect.
Again, Fedora Core will not focus on one of them, and will lack a good application in this field. Sure, thre are some gnome apps which are fine, but they will not stand against f-spot: the users will expect f-spot in a complete desktop system.
So what will happen next? What will Fedora Core do? Support the development of some new applications? Another gnome search machine, but not mono based?
I would propose and would love to see that Fedora Core should switch over to KDE ๐
But because of the fact that this will not happen Fedora Core has to check that they will not loose contact to the modern application developments. So I would suggest that Fedora Core keeps an open eye at the evolving of the software world and supports the apps they can use – and if these are KDE-apps they should support a command line version and an alternative gui.
This could be an option for several software projects, and that would help Fedora Core.
But I think they will start thinking about this when it’s almost too late. We will see if they fight this problem in a proper way… In the worst case they Fedora Core foundation will move more to KDE because they can get better apps there – something I would appreciate ๐
Ubuntu is an African word meaning “I cannot install Gentoo”.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning: “Dapper Drake will come out before I’m done emerging KDE”
There has been many posts mentioning Slackware. I used to be a Slackware user, but left when they stopped supporting Gnome.
I would like to see a review of Slackware. This would be interesting and I haven’t seen one for a long time posted on OSNEWS.
I am a long time slackware user and also a long time gnome user. Here is my review of slackware 10.2:
Slackware 10.2 totally rocks my world, as always. Stable, secure, fast, and up to date. I can choose between 3 different gnome builds baked up special for slackware: gware, freerock, and dropline. I use freerock myself. It’s a vanilla gnome build with some extra packages, so it’s a better gnome than PV ever packaged up.
Get it, now.
Thank you, I’ll have to check out freerock. I have used Dropline before, but I just didn’t like it.
The more vanilla build sounds more like what I’m looking for.
yeah, freerock is quite excellent: gsb.freerock.org — like slackware they have a stable branch and a -current branch. stable is gnome 2.10 and current is 2.12.1. they will release a stable 2.12.1 very soon.
both gware and freerock are nice because they are easy to install and easy to uninstall, unlike dropline. they also don’t replace a bunch of stuff, just a few things required by gnome. dropline replace xorg, installs pam, and does a lot more that makes it impossible to uninstall.
gware and freerock are both excellent.
>There has been many posts mentioning Slackware. I >used to be a Slackware user, but left when they >stopped supporting Gnome.
Dropline?
Ubuntu, the distro for the user that wants Windows but doesn’t want to pay for it.
If a user wants to use Windows he/she just have to download it from the gazillions of places over the Internet. That’s piracy, you say, but who gives a F*CK!
Besides, using Windows either bought or pirated serves the purposes of MS.
I use Ubuntu and I too take it as an insult. Sure it has some issues, but what’s the Linux Distro that doesn’t have them.
So it’s ok to make broad claims if you like it, but not if you dont?
You tried Ubuntu and get screwed, so you went to your most confortable distro, that’s normal. Of course, that’s the same reason why I hear people saying all the time that Linux it’s not ready for the Desktop, because who says that it’s much more confortable with Windows. So to summit up:
1) Linux is ready for the Desktop
2) Don’t like Linux use Windows I don’t care.
3) You like Linux, you can use one of the thousands Linux Distro’s all basically equal, all diferent.
4) Diversity is great and that’s one of the things that makes Linux strong.
Alves
I broke something in under 30 seconds. just lke 5.04 this release is “meh”
I broke something in under 30 seconds. just lke 5.04 this release is “meh”
Could you get less specific please? Any distro can be broken in a matter of seconds if you really want to…
Ubuntu doesn’t give you the down-to-the-metal feel of Slackware or Gentoo or even Debian Pure, but it’s a great distro for those of us who want to use Linux, but don’t want to become Linux gurus in the process.
Look, I fancy myself a decent programmer, but I spend most of my time writing Perl, PHP, and Java for the web. Though I can hack out a good shell script and can move my way around the command line decently, I have no desire to recompile my kernel and play with modules. That’s fine for some people, but there’s all kinds of programmers these days, and there’s no need to keep dragging people down to the lower levels of the stack — not that lower is not as important, mind you!
Though I can hack out a good shell script and can move my way around the command line decently, I have no desire to recompile my kernel and play with modules.
I’m fairly sure that the people who are able to write a decent shell script vastly outnumber the ones who managed to compile a kernel or follow the Gentoo installation instructions…
I’m fairly sure that the people who are able to write a decent shell script vastly outnumber the ones who managed to compile a kernel or follow the Gentoo installation instructions…
D’oh! That’s supposed to be the other way around…
I cut my teeth on Gentoo and learned a lot. And yes, it’s very easy to customize. The problem is I don’t have time to go fix issues that sometimes broke when emerging new apps. I found myself spending some amount of time reparing what I broke. You learn a lot but I no longer have the time. I also had a much smoother experience upgrading gnome using the debian package manager (it’s also a hell of a lot faster) when compared to Gentoo. It wasn’t a simple emerge update.
I also like the fact that every device I’ve tried so far (brand new external DVD burner) works easily and flawlessly under Ubuntu. I simply plugged it in and bam it works. I have yet to use a distro that worked so well.
Gentoo is top notch, don’t get me wrong. But for those of us that have less time to spend tweaking our distro’s Ubuntu is incredible.
How much crap do you want to do yourself and how much will you just reuse other people’s work? Even most gurus will probably want to reuse more than you’re willing to admit.
Well it’s not compiling itself but a way to get the options you want and not sobody elses choices.I appreciate that extra freedom.What if you install a binairy and discover that most options you need are not enabled at compile time for whatever reason?You most likely will have to compile from source yourself.Personally i think it saves me a lot of time later on knowing all the apps support what i want and no more or less.
Gentoo makes you cool because you can emerge some_cool_package, it compiles stuff, and you still do not have a clue as to what you or the system are doing, but hey, it means you compiled something and it has gotten you 0.1% performance improvement and saved you 50KB of disk space. You have wasted three days doing it but hey, it was worth it!
I have worked with linux since Yddgrasil released the first 4 CD set of GNULinux sources in 1994/5. I wil tell you I am much happier running KUbuntu and getting actual work done than sitting there waiting for my system to compile so I can surf the net.
In the end, system professionals want to keep the systems as homogenous as possible. They choose the distribution that will run the widest variety of vendor supported hardware and software. In any case, this is generally only two distros, RedHat or Suse. Anything else is meaningless unless you want to support yourself, which is NEVER the case in the enterprise. You want to be able to point the finger at somebody since enough point the finger at you.
Please stop with linux {pro,guru,leets} etc crap. I have said it before and I will say it again. The operating system means nothing. The apps are everything.
>Please stop with linux {pro,guru,leets} etc crap. I have said it before and I will say it again. The operating system means nothing. The apps are everything.
Are you trolling, or you just can’t realize how stupid this sentence is?
Forget about customization! When you want a powerful and stable Operating system that is there to do work on it and NOT to customize it and play with it like a toy,
Ubuntu is THE best distro out there!
Why? cuz it’s out of the box! It works great. It doesn’t need to be configure. No kernel compilation, no fail package while installing. Just a beautiful and at least a lot configurable linux distro that is way better than MS Winblows that we had to use at school or at work.
When you want an OS to work, Only work! How useless gentoo / slackware can be. Think about it.
—-
Aristo
Ubuntu isn’t designed to be all things to all men. It’s aimed at a certain kind of user and it’s focused on keeping to that brief. The review alludes to this when it mentions that Ubuntu doesn’t include a selector for installing development tools on a single pass, unlike, say, SUSE or Debian.
Ubuntu is a very good distro in my experience, but that is all. It won’t cook breakfast, improve your love life or increase your IQ. Sorry. Ubuntu is simply a much tweaked and simplified snapshot of Debian Sid. The extent to which it’s been oversold is ludicrous. Many will love it but plenty of others will be better off looking elsewhere because Ubuntu is not designed for them.
Why do you expect to get a better performance on your notebook or desktop PC by compiling the kernel.org kernel instead of the one from ubuntu ?
Some people are just trolling because his best “super-distro” doesn’t have the ubuntu success.
IF YOU DON’T LIKE UBUNTU, THEN CHOOSE ANOTHER DISTRIBUTION. NO ONE IS FORCING YOU…
That means nothing else should change til the official release except bug fixes I would imagine. So a review of the release candidate isn’t completely useless like some seem to imply.
It’s a nice distro. It’s a nice improvement over the last release Ubuntu Hoary. I love Debian-based distros. Screw rpm stuff.
ubuntu build around xfce would be popular. xubuntu?
ubuntu build around xfce would be popular. xubuntu?
In the works.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu
ubuntu build around xfce would be popular. xubuntu?
In the works.