“When looking at desktop Linux by itself, any analysis of the subject quickly leads to this question: why do users choose one version over another? There are as many answers for this question as there are users to give them, but ultimately it should boil down to just a few key decisions which must be made. Considering this, it may be surprising to some people to find out how successful Ubuntu Linux has been relative to other distributions.”
How about Debian Desktop (or a more fresh Debian, package wise*) done right with solid financial backing as opossed to three geeks living in a closet rolling their own distro? I wouldn’t bet my business on the latter, honestly.
* Yes, I know about Sid, but Sid is a) unspported, b) breaks a lot by its very nature, and c) not polished.
Just wait until they come out with SID 6.7 … then you’ll be sorry you said that.
LOL! Good one!
> as opossed to three geeks living in a closet rolling their own distro?
Umm… like Slackware, which is ONE geek rolling his own?
And what happened when he relativetly recently fell ill? Sure, the distro is still around, but you have to admit that its future was in limbo.
Oh, yeah, and Debian are, what? 1200 geeks, many of them employed in big companies (IBM et alli)…
Well, since Debian isn’t a up-to-date desktop distro, your point is kind of moot…
Free CDs
there is only one CD I have seen more of, the omnipresent AOL CD of years gone past.
For me, Ubuntu has a universal appeal. Instead of reinventing the wheel with heavily modified kernels, packages, etc, they (the Ubuntu team) simply make common sense decisions which are built upon a rock solid base. A large “Universe” repository, helpful community and a desire to make a real difference make it more than a commodity.
All in one CD. I dunno, but this somehow gives the impression that it’s optimized, selected and made to just simply work out of the box (except slmodem).
Free cds shipped (no broadband required) + Debian + easier install + marketing
No other distro combines so much freedom, power, ease of use, and stability.
People who believe that other distros could do better on the desktop are generally forgetting freedom. But freedom is important to many users worldwide. That’s where Linspire and Xandros get ruled out. The cost is not the real problem. One can download them for free on p2p networks, and pay-for-use package managers could be cracked like any piece of proprietary software. There just isn’t enough interest to do so.
Also let’s not forget the stability of (k)Ubuntu. Well, Kubuntu has had a few concerns but this is going to be a thing of the past with Canonical throwing more weight behind it for 6.04 (Kubuntu will be treated on an equal footing as Ubuntu).
The power is important, too. Mandriva’s KDE desktop is slow. Kubuntu’s KDE desktop is fast and responsive.
As for Fedora and Opensuse… who wants to have his interests being in conflict with the ones of a large company ? I mean, a large company can only be trusted for one thing : seeking profit. Sometimes that will imply taking decisions detrimental for users who don’t pay. I wouldn’t like to be one of them.
At last, Debian… well Debian is an excellent distro, but for my mother’s laptop, I prefer kubuntu. Because it’s easier to install for me (like autodetection of the WLAN card), and easier to use for her (like the various tweaks that have been done to KDE). Yes we’re lazy. But that’s representative !
(and yes, my mother uses kubuntu, and she’s very happy. No dual boot here.)
I can’t say Ubuntu is more stable than any other distro. In fact I was very disappointed by the fact, that as soon as I enabled optional repositories in Ubuntu (like universe and multiverse) I ran into lots of dependencies issues (it was a fresh install of latest Ubuntu). I know these repos are not “officially supported”, but c’mon, what’s the advantage of large packages base of debian if you can’t use them on Ubuntu… In my opinion Ubuntu’s stability and ease of use are much exaggerated.
I’ve not had any dependency problems with Universe or Multiverse.
Woah!
That post was just off the wall. Lets see archlinux will kick ubuntu ass any day! It is i686 optmized and you got all the freedom you can ever want. And one might say setup is tough hell you learn a few things in it and it easy. It the fastest and I mean fastest distro I ever installed. (Net + CD)
the community, the manifesto, the cd´s to share with others etc
Ubuntu really offers nothing any other distro doesn’t.
Its installer is not graphical.
Its GNOME implementation is decent, and things do “just work”, but this is true of most GNOME distro’s.
Package management is not the friendliest around. You still cannot click a .deb on the internet and have it install automatically – something most decent distro’s have allowed for a long time.
It really just isn’t that great of a distro, but it is the easiest to obtain.
Speaking personally Ubuntu is what I user on non-fiddling machines because things Just Work(TM) at a lower lever. For example WiFi drivers for many cards are included as is ndiswrapper in the default install. In addition loads of effort has been put into make laptops work too, things like suspend/resume working out of the box etc. It is the little details like that which just make putting Ubuntu onto a machine trivial.
“isn’t that great of a distro” – where exactly did you learn english?
“Its installer is not graphical. ” – well, I can see it. What do you think it is, a CLI?
“You still cannot click a .deb on the internet and have it install automatically” – just how badly do you want to infect your PC?
Ubuntu has signed repositories, if you want to go hunting on dodgy sites for your software, stick to windoze.
> Its installer is not graphical.
Not graphical yet effective, isn’t it?
“> Its installer is not graphical.
Not graphical yet effective, isn’t it?”
I have to agree with you on this. I never could understand all the whining about a non graphical installer. I will take on any day over a graphical installer that works poorly. What difference does it make if your screen displays pretty pictures when it shows text or actually just puts up the text? Either way you still have to read it.
Bill
I never could understand all the whining about a non graphical installer. I will take on any day over a graphical installer that works poorly.
Because so many text installers are a PITA to use if you’re a nervious n00b.
See, back when I tried YDL, all of the screenshots I saw were for the Anaconda Graphical Installer. All of the instructions in the book that came with my disks were for Anaconda.
I could point and click and configure and partition. Yay!
Except for the fact Anaconda was friggin’ broken under YDL. (And those idjits at Terrasoft *knew* this — twas buried deep in their FAQ!)
That left me with a text based installer that assumed you were an expert. A text based installer for which I had no instructions and could find no good help for. A text based installer that was poorly designed and hard to navagate. A text based installer that left me in tears of frustration as I spent a whole saturday just trying to get my disk formatted and installed.
—
What I like about Ubuntu is that you don’t have to be a Linux expert to use it to do a basic install.
The steps are Clear. Your options are Explained. It’s easy to navigate with your keyboard.
(Plus it’s easy to go and get help if you’re not clear on something.)
Yes, a nicely designed GUI would be aces, but the Ubuntu installer isn’t a good text installer.
It’s a good installer. Period.
If you consider Ubuntu’s install interface to not be graphical, then neither is Windows XP’s. If anyone has done a fresh install of WinXP they know what I’m talking about.
Just because the installer is not graphical does not mean it isn’t a GOOD installer. It works very well. Detects and sets up everything (usually) so after a reboot, you (the user) are able to start working.
(Well, after you get your codecs and stuff
If this is true for most GNOME distributions, then I would like to know them. I don’t know any serious alternatives to Ubuntu besides Fedora. I actually happen to like Red Hat and their contributions and thus tend towards Fedora, but everytime I switch from one to the other, I have to admit that Ubuntu does a lot of things better. Ironically, the “not graphical” installer is one of those things, since the Ubuntu installation is a lot easier and more convenient than the installation of Fedora and most other distributions. Who cares about pretty pictures for something you see only once. It is really the usability that matters and Ubuntu got it.
It is true that one can’t easily install packages from the internet, but as was pointed out, this is just a different philosophy and Ubuntu makes more than up for it with a universe repository that is larger than any other non-Debian binary repository. Also, the whole integration of package installation and updating is far more advanced in Ubuntu than it is in Fedora (maybe PUP will change some of this).
So where are all the alternatives that are based on GNOME, that are completely free software, that are as polished, simple and professional and which are no meta-distributions like Debian? I am interested in Foresight, but that still has a long way to go and no serious financial backing. I will also keep an eye on OpenSuSE, but that is still far from being a GNOME distribution.
Maybe Ubuntu is riding a wave, but this wave will stay up until the alternatives catch up with it. I hope this will happen since I don’t agree with everything Ubuntu is doing, but blaming it all on the free CDs is just missing the point completely.
You are an idiot.
In your browser associate the mime type mimetype (whatever.deb) with Kpackage the installer will then launch and try to install the package, unmet dependant packages may stop this from succeeding.
open a console as root type in apt-get -f install
This will result in one of two actions 1 the package will break too much and the installer will ask for permission to delete the half installed failed package, Or 2 the installer will ask to download the required packeges and finish installing the initial package.
Debian is fun.
What makes Ubuntu so great is that it takes every six months a snapshot of Debian Sid and starts building it’s own distro from this base. Debian is a very solid high quality distro with 16 000+ packages. Ubuntu takes about 4 000 of these packages and upgrades and polishes them, and the rest of the packages are still available, automatically rebuilt for Ubuntu although not officially supported (well, there’s unofficial “MOTU” support).
Now, I’ve been thinking that Debian should also adopt the same successful strategy (because people say that Ubuntu is “Debian done right”). Every six months Debian could take a snapshot of the current Ubuntu, select 25% of Ubuntu’s packages and give them some extra polish and upgrades. The rest of Ubuntu’s packages could still be kept available in Debian, although not officially supported.
This way Ubuntu could be based on Debian and Debian could be based on Ubuntu and everybody would win and no-one would have to do the ugly, difficult & unthankful job of maintaining a solid 16 000+ packages GNU/Linux system. Hey, what do you think, folks? 8*)
Ubuntu already has that Utunbu project, where they’re trying to share all the work they’ve done on apps they maintain, with Debian. (so Debian only has to deal with 12 000 packages?) I think the problem is Debian proper has other goals and different standards.
Ubuntu already has that Utunbu project, where they’re trying to share all the work they’ve done on apps they maintain, with Debian. (so Debian only has to deal with 12 000 packages?) I think the problem is Debian proper has other goals and different standards.
I’m sorry to have to point this out but you got it all backwards, Utnubu is a project started by a Debian developer. (Utnubu is Ubuntu backwards.)
http://people.debian.org/~nomeata/
http://utnubu.alioth.debian.org/
One thing you’re right about, though, is that Debian and Ubuntu have different goals and standards — I leave it for others to decide if this is a problem or not. 😉
Ah, my bad. I guess I thought that it was going the other way because of Debian’s apparent cold shoulder to the project.
I had no idea there were so many packages in Ubuntu’s Universe that aren’t in Debian, either…
I guess both Debian devs and Ubuntu devs are welcome to contribute to Utnubu but neither parties seem to be very enthusiastic about it. If I’m wrong and there exists great enthusiasm among Ubuntu people to port Ubuntu’s changes back to Debian (via Utnubu or some other project), then please correct me.
I had no idea there were so many packages in Ubuntu’s Universe that aren’t in Debian, either…
I don’t know if there are so many “Ubuntu only” packages but Ubuntu has added some packages to its repositories that Debian users can get via http://www.apt-get.org. These are specifically built for Debian, so it kind of makes sense that Ubuntu rebuilds them and adds them to its own repos.
Ubuntu is a simple yet powerfull distro. The good community behind it really helps allot and makes the distro more friendly. It only installs the packages you need, and then its up to you and apt-get install. Most things work out of the box, and if they don’t… you only need a forum post to get them working… so i recommend it allot. Ubuntu is the linux’s “winning horse” on desktop!
I’ve tried ubuntu and kubuntu and just never managed to get it work on any of the 4 machines I’ve tried it on – Mostly access network stuff causes it to lock and crash. But it still fails to find and utilise most of my hardware. (but this is the fault of linux in general, not just ubuntu)
I still think that there is way too much segregation in linux. each distro may as well be it’s own OS. so when you download binaries you have to hunt for YOUR own particularly brand of linux. But installation leads into a whole other problem (for another time perhaps)
TROLL !
No, he is no troll!
I also tried Ubuntu-every release so far- and Sound never worked for me on 2 totally different machines.
But Sarge works out of the box for example.
I cannot imagine that there are no persons out there who has no problems with Ubuntu.
of course hes not
no ubuntu worked out of the box on my amd3000+/gf6800
X doesnt starts, wrong config.
anyway, yes, ubuntu only has success because of hype and marketing. people underestimate marketing. Linux people totally forget it
hahaha
if you’re having issues installing or getting networking to work on Unbuntu then, linux or its variants probably aren’t for you.
Best to stick with MacOS or Windows(tm)
Ehm sorry, but what kind of hardware do you have? If (K)Ubuntu doesn’t work for you, then propably no distro will, and you should seriously consider to get some new hardware first before trying Linux at all. I’ve installed Ubuntu on a Pentium-based server, an Duron/Unichrome-based mini barebone, my AMD64 desktop machine and on my girlfriends iBook, and EVERYTHING, I repeat: everything – worked right away.
My impression is that Ubuntu has been put together by a team of experienced and highly adept people – with regard to launching a new business/brand/product/idea or whatever and not only with with regard to the programmatic stuff in terms of configuration and choice of packages on that one simple CD. Ubuntu has provided a top-class website that is almost guaranteed to draw people in and foster a sense of community as well as offering a lot of help and how-to. This did not happen by accident but by careful planning and hard work.
The other ingredient is word of mouth. I suspect that the rapid spread of Ubuntu demonstrates how stunningly effective and powerful word of mouth can be.
All that said, the desktop linux survey has been discussed elsewhere and there are some reasons to doubt the validity of their findings. It’s not that the findings are wrong, just that they probably exaggerate Ubuntu’s popularity a bit at the expense of some other distros.
I’m a Debian user (Sid) but I’ll probably be joining the ranks of Ubuntu over the next year or so. As a desktop user I can create a really really nice desktop on Debian, but it takes so much more work and time than it does on Ubuntu and answers to problems with Debian are much harder to come by. That sense of community and user support can be crucial to success or failure and imho Debian doesn’t have it, or not so much anyway.
“As a desktop user I can create a really really nice desktop on Debian, but it takes so much more work and time than it does on Ubuntu and answers to problems with Debian are much harder to come by.”
I use Kanotix and it takes very little work to create a nice desktop: 20 minutes and it literally installs itself.
As to answers to the problems you find plenty in the Kanotix forums or Wiki.
Ubuntu is just riding a wave of hype and popularity. It’s overrated as a distribution, just like its ancestor Debian has always been. Most of the bigger mainstream Linux distros are improving rapidly wrt. [free]desktop[.org] functionality, ease of use, hw-detection, etc. The Ubuntu team just managed to get some of it out the door faster, and with more buzzwords to go with it. Let the Linux beginners all hail Ubuntu, while I would just sudo apt-whatever uninstall brown-gnome-of-clay-distro.
Now, go ahead and mod me down, for I am most certainly trolling, right ?
You are right,and you get one point from me.
I like Ubuntu, but I think is just hype.There’s nothing my Slack machine can’t do compared with an Ubuntu one. And I get pkg and swaret. Priceless!
Yes Ubuntu probably is riding a wave, as did Gentoo a couple of years ago, so that is a fair point. However, don’t underestimate the power of that single free CD and its very simple installation routine (insert CD, hit enter four times, enter user name and password, 40 minutes later you have a fully functioning system). Non-technical users I’ve tried this on are surprised and pleased at how simple it all is compared to the horror stories about Linux they’ve heard. That said, I’ve found SUSE 10 to be a more polished and overall fuller distro (YaST, etc.) if you have a fast machine, but it takes 5 cds or a DVD and rather more fiddling around to do get there
Edited 2005-12-07 11:47
Have you already checked YaST, ported to Debian (if you really have a need for it)?
http://yast4debian.alioth.debian.org
Gentoo rode on a wave of über optimisation, tweaking etc. Basically a “Linux from Scratch” with better marketing, setup and easier to install etc. and there was a new group motivated to push it forward beyond the supreme niche that LFS occupied.
As for Ubuntu; they’re on a wave because they have addressed the bitchfeast that is desktop Linux; the integrated everything into ONE desktop; one of everything, stripped out all the unnecessary crap that end users don’t require, and voila, you have an operating system occupying once cd with everything one needs to get their desktop up and running.
How do they keep ontop of that wave? keep on the cutting edge of Linux desktop development; keep integrating things into the system, ensure that everything works out of the box and work with the different components to ensure that, for example, the enhancements are merged back into the mainline source tree.
I almost modded you up, but I disagree about Debian being overrated. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so loved after ten years and it wouldn’t be the mother of about 130 distros.
Indeed, Debian is not overrateed. Without Debian, Ubuntu wouldn’t be around (at least not in today’s incarnation). The thing about Debian, is that it is a meta-distro in the sense that many have picked the parts the liked/needed and rolled a distro from them.
Apart from the many distros spawned around the RPM-format originating from Red Hat, I haven’t seen anything remotely like it. Debian is a lot more than your average distro and the project deserves all credit it gets.
Exactly, very good analysis.
You are most certainly trolling, right. Actually that’s the only thing you’re right about.
Either that, or you’re a complete ignorant. Debian is probably the most advanced distribution in terms of supported platforms, infrastructure organization, package management, documentation and QA. Take a look at APT, alternatives, kernel package management. Go to http://www.debian.org and browse a bit around.
Rather than relying on buzzwords as you imply, Ubuntu improves on Debian by focusing on a relatively small subset of packages, which are fully supported. The rest of the packages are still available though in the ‘officially unsupported’ universe repository.
By doing that they can speed up the release cycle and offer recent enough software versions with every release, which is very nice on desktop setups. As a side note, Debian ‘stable’ is released much less often, which is *extremely* nice on servers.
Add to these stable financial support from a so-far very nice and friendly corporation, as well as some decently polished look-and-feel on the desktop side, and there you have it – one deservedly successful Linux distribution.
Edited 2005-12-07 17:33
my wife learned linux from the portuguese language of ubuntu, but she hated the desktop, nothing new to say about that. i liked xandros and pclinux, but they had nothing in portuguese. today, i picked up a magazine of linux pcmaster with kalango 3.2 and ran the live cd. it’s a nice spin-off of kurumin.
Now, go ahead and mod me down, for I am most certainly trolling, right ?
Yeah.. you are. And buzzwords? I can’t think of any buzzwords that Ubuntu have ever used outside what is expected of OS-speak.
Slackware is best!!!
Gnome has cooties, bleh!
I was a fan of Ubuntu when it was first released, but like all distros I see on distrowatch, it was fun to install and use for a while. Kubuntu recently seemed to be rather instable (the window “sigterm” appeared very often while using most common programs). I think that in the end if you really want to be productive with your PC the distro of choice is Fedora. It is always stable, I can do things I can’t do with other distros (for instance, recording a Podcast: I tried with Audacity both on Fedora and Ubuntu, it is incredible how better the clip recorded on Fedora sounded!)
Ciao
Renato
http://nightpassage.org
I think that in the end if you really want to be productive with your PC the distro of choice is Fedora. It is always stable
Whether Fedora is stable or not, it depends on who you speak to.
“Whether Fedora is stable or not, it depends on who you speak to.”
Same as any other distro. whats your point?
Ubuntu gains much more marketshare thanks to fedora
javanization and over modified gnome desktop.
While I understand how much fedora customize its gnome desktop, I fail to see how this distro is more java friendly than slackware. I code java for a living and I have used RH flavours until 8.0 after that I used slackware exclusively. My own machine is java centric and I like to setup myself everything. And yes, I use gnome , DLG to be more precise. More than that, I don’t see how one distro is more java friendly than other. And yes again, I never used rpm download from Sun when installing java on my RH system. Always simple baby, always simple.
“As for Fedora and Opensuse… who wants to have his interests being in conflict with the ones of a large company ? I mean, a large company can only be trusted for one thing : seeking profit.”
And thats what Canonical is doing. Fedora is managed by a non-profit entity through the Fedora foundation now just FYI
“While I understand how much fedora customize its gnome desktop”
Actually the amount of customisations done by Ubuntu is far far more than Fedora.
“More than that, I don’t see how one distro is more java friendly than other. ”
Fedora has a whole lot of full time java developers and includes the first free open source java stack using GCJ
“Actually the amount of customisations done by Ubuntu is far far more than Fedora.”
I don’t know which ones customize more its gnome desktop. And frankly, it doesn’t afect my metabolism.
“Fedora has a whole lot of full time java developers and includes the first free open source java stack using GCJ”
And this suppose to help me delivering all my stuffs within the given timeframe? I don’t use GCJ and most probably I will never use it. I use plain simple JDK/JRE downloaded straight from sun.com . Nothing more, nothing less. Or the other way around, really doesn’t matter.
”
I don’t know which ones customize more its gnome desktop. And frankly, it doesn’t afect my metabolism. ”
Then stop complaining lying about Fedora customisations and the Ubuntu kernel has crap loads of patches they havent pushed upstream yet.
”
And this suppose to help me delivering all my stuffs within the given timeframe? I don’t use GCJ and most probably I will never use it. I use plain simple JDK/JRE downloaded straight from sun.com . Nothing more, nothing less. Or the other way around, really doesn’t matter.”
You dont care about a entirely Free out of the box Java software integrated well into the system?. Every Java developer does
“Then stop complaining lying about Fedora customisations and the Ubuntu kernel has crap loads of patches they havent pushed upstream yet. ”
I didn’t complain about anything in Fedora.See … I never used it. You must,probably,confuse me with something else.
“You dont care about a entirely Free out of the box Java software integrated well into the system?. Every Java developer does”
Listen pal, company I work for gives a rat’s ass about free. If java was payable, they would pay for it.Actually they pay a lot for Websphere and alike. I have to mantain as much as possible compatibility with other environments. The moment they will say GCJ, be sure I will have no choice but to use it.However,trust me,this will not happen in a million years where I work. So don’t give me crap about every java developer cares about well integrated software into the system. I do what I am paid to do, I ask no questions, afterall they pay me to just do my work. Is really that simple.
>I do what I am paid to do, I ask no questions, afterall they pay me to just do my work. Is really that simple.
You don’t get paid to think, you get paid to work. Then why do you care about your opinion?
“You don’t get paid to think, you get paid to work.”
There you go, I’m happy you finally understand
“Then why do you care about your opinion?”
I,somehow, didn’t caught the sense of your phrase. Must be the morning coffee.
Coming from a Windows background I like being able to put in a CD, do a few simple things, and end up with an OS. Ubuntu does that.
I like firing up my OS and having my hardware ready and available to use, configured as I’d expect. Ubuntu does that.
I like having a point of contact for answering support questions, and getting meaningful and helpful responses by the droves. Ubuntu does that.
I like clicking on things and them doing what I’d expect them to do. Ubuntu does that.
As far as “desktop use” goes for me, Ubuntu does that. Granted more polish is needed, and Breezy is a great upgrade from previous versions (I’ve been a user since Hoary). It’s just simplicity. It really is “Linux for human beings”.
Before Ubuntu I tried redhat, slackware, gentoo, morphix and numerous other KDE and Gnome based distros. They all offered pieces of the puzzle, but none offered what I would call a complete package. Ubuntu, for me, does just that.
I believe there are many more “technical savvy” people out there (people who can CLI to their hearts content, but get lost in C code) who probably feel the same as me. That is what I believe “is it about Ubuntu”
Edited 2005-12-07 12:21
“Coming from a Windows background I like being able to put in a CD, do a few simple things, and end up with an OS. Ubuntu does that.”
I think you have hit upon the main reason Ubuntu is so popular. It seems to attract a lot of new users and many of them are from the Windows world. It is normally the distro I suggest to people I know who are getting tired of Windows and are looking into switching. (That and suggesting they might want to look at a Mac). The reason I suggest it is because of the very points you made in your post. It is a Windows world out there and if you want to succeed you must make the experience just as easy out of the box.
It would have been interesting to see how many of the people who responded to the survey were fairly recent to the Linux world. I have a feeling quite a few of them would be. But that is another survey.
Bill
I’ve been with SuSE since 6.2, and for a full-featured workstation SuSE can be hard to beat – but since the electricity/telephone pole outside our house was struck by lightning a couple of weeks ago, taking out a broadband router and two workstations (+DVD player, +TV) I needed a computer urgently, bought an old Compaq Pentium 300 laptop, and put on Ubuntu (SuSE’s just too heavily laden to fly on it) and I’m very impressed. It looks nice for a start, people go “that’s a nice desktop”. It’s as fast as can be expected on the machine, (and it got me up and running and out of a hole with clients quickly). Gnome has come on by leaps and bounds in useability – I’d still go KDE on a powerbox, and probably back with SuSE 10, but I really do like Ubuntu, the ease, philosophy, everything really.
I like the way they send out 5 CDs as a default order, too (like the man says. postage costs more than the CDs), and I’m sure this has enormously enhanced its popularity – I’ve given two away already, one to a Windows user who really wants to change and loved the live version.
Perhaps it’s because there’s so many OSNews articles about it all the time?
(Hint: That was satire for you anonymii out there)
I wish people would produce some usefull critics instead of the default brown color scheme being ugly, really! 2 clicks and it’s fixed in any color you like. It is absolutely the last of my worries and I hope people stop bothering about it!
What “2 clicks” are you speaking of that will change the dirt-brown color and drums?
Do “2 clicks” change the sound theme, login screen, background, gdm splash, so the user has consistent theme throughout?
It’s not just the window border color that needs de-uglification, you know.
“2 clicks and it’s fixed in any color you like. I”
Come on, the background is a Ubuntu logo floating, no hovering perhaps in a BROWN sky reflected in a BROWN sea.
It is like a vision of a sceptic tank.
Meanwhile two clicks away there is a plain brown background you can choose.
What would be wrong with blue?
Two clicks does what?
OMFG, who the hell cares? If that’s the biggest problem you can come up with, than just go download whatever pretty background picture you want and shut up!
tries to be a “Linux for human beeings”.
It´s that easy…
I can’t speak for Ubuntu, having never tried it. I can speak for Kubuntu. Having tried it, I can admit I was not impressed at all. First of all, once you log into KDE on Kubuntu, there are 98 processes running. Why is this necessary? As I am posting, I have Konqueror, Kmail and Ktorrent running in KDE, with top showing only 68 processes running. Second, I don’t understand why so many are impressed with the Kubuntu/Ubuntu installer. I fail to see how the Kubuntu installer is any better than the standard Debian installer. Third, Debian stable IS rock solid stable. I can not say the same about Kubuntu. Fourth, what is the deal with Kaffeine on Kubuntu? Why must it crash EVERY time you exit the application? Given that Kaffeine crashed at exit on 5.04, why didn’t the Kubuntu developers fix this bug for the 5.10 release?
If you think the Kaffeine issue is a simple flame or troll, I invite you to search the Ubuntu forums for Kaffeine and see how many are suffering with this issue.
I would not recommend Ubuntu/Kubuntu to those new to Linux due to these reasons. PCLinuxOS is far more stable, easier to install and doesn’t have these issues. Of course, this is just my opinion.
My best guess is a lot of these processes stem from that they still use a lot of the underpinnings from Ubuntu, like gstreamer. Also gstreamer is crapware (which is proved by using totem with xine as backend rather than gstreamer), and the rest of the underpinnings from gnome still running under the hood surely doesn’t make things better.
I liked Ubuntu and used it for awhile…
was really impressed with the hardware detection/configuration… even multiple tv cards worked first time… unlike windows to this day (my ATI TV Wonder I need to download 3 packages manually from ATI.com… what’s with that?)
However… I’ve recently switched to PCLinuxOS (mainly because I heard it came with stuff like codecs and mp3 capability already installed.)
I haven’t looked back… besides the stupid name, PCLinuxOS is great, things just work like Ubuntu, but IMO, it’s just a cooler distrib.
The ubuntuforums.org is helpful 🙂
I am using it everyday.
1 click – window decorations
1 click – background
1 click – turn off sound (If you don’t know what your computer’s doing I don’t see that it making silly annoying noises will help much anyway – and all sound themes are annoying)
so its 3 – big deal
If you don’t like brown I believe Windows does a lovely tasteful shade of blue
Edited 2005-12-07 13:19
I have 3 computers at home:
– PC AMD64 3000+, 2Gb RAM, SATA, PCI-E Radeon X700 dualhead.
– Mac G4 – standard with 512Mb RAM
– old fasion Dell Latitude CPt Celeron 500Mhz, 128Mb RAM laptop.
Ubuntu 5.04 i386 – works fine on all my computers – no big deal- like 10 other distros I checked.
Yesterday received big envelope by snail mail – Ubuntu 5.10 in many flavoures is here (PowerPC, i386, x64).
What a surprise.
64 bit version can’t recognize my Radeon X700 and can’t run X with vesa driver. i386 has the same problem on my AMD computer. I checked Ubuntu forum… well I am not the only one who is crying.
Mac G4 and old Dell laptop were handled fine by Ubuntu 5.10., but WiFi on Dell was not working.
Conclusion:
There is nothing special about Ubuntu. They just spend more money on better marketing and professional image. Their CD’s look PRO when given away comparing to burned myslf Fedora images on TDK CDr’s.
Better hardware recognition… well maybe, but not in my case.
I still have FC3 installed as my desktop. It s fully updated, it just works, it is very stable, flexible… but show me Linux that is not
I wish Ubuntu all the best.
I will spread around Ubuntu’s CD I got… but not being 100% convinced. I think that not working popular gfx card (and probably other popular hardware) can push some people off from the way to enlightenment of using free, opensource operating systems and software, as they may see Linux as “not ready” yet.
Just my $0.02
Forgive my English.. it is not my native language.
It’s installer does not require multi-hour compiling that would result in a 1% overall system optimization.
It’s installer does not require that you print out a manual to use.
It’s installer is an actual installer that installs software for you instead of relying on the end user to know what software they want when they’ve never used linux before, or don’t know what’s new, or each package by name.
It’s installer.
ok, so it’s not Gentoo. There are plenty of other distros that are also not Gentoo.
Hey when do you stop your ubuntu marketing ?
There are like 3 articles about it everyday, since monthes and monthes
I don’t hate ubuntu or anything, but i start TO BE BORED!!
i think osnews is bought or soldout to Shuttleworth. look at past 6 months articles on osnews site. ubuntu is everywhere. in fact osnews has stopped writing about other distros. is there any under the table transactions?
and by the way, if ubuntu is so great, then there would not be thousands of queriwes on ubuntu forum, asking everything from installing X to setting up mail and many other.
Ubuntu is just a publicity hype and it will die down just as another distros like mepis, knoppix, linspire, xandros etc etc.
Why linux guys can’t even replicate performance and ease of operation of win2K, forget about compiting with XP.
Can anyone tell me about a software program/ architecture, any networking setups that are not existing in windows. Almost everything is copied from windows (not appearance but in therms of functionality)
Wake up guys, you are chasing WIN2K…….
Ubuntu easy to use. Maybe ?
With NO FIREWALL on the installer you have Three choices.
1 Update your apt-get repositories and then install a firewall, over the big bad internet, assuming you know how to do this step.
2 Use a different os and down loader to obtain a firewall, Windows rescuing Linux.
3 Write your own iptables script with the included tools VI, not very friendly at all.
GET A CLUE PUT A FIREWALL ON UMBUNTO!!!!
Even with killerwall I had MANY an ssh, rdesktop, telenet, ftp??attempt while I was attempting to update the system.
apt-get update
I think I was rooted ? DHCP EXPLOIT
Only RED HAT 8 is rooted quicker.
OH well back to quess who
1. The default Human/Brown GNOME theme.
2. One CD
3. Synaptic
4. ubuntuforums.org
5. ubuntuguide.org
6. Ubuntu Manifesto
7. sudo
8. works on all my computers
9. free CDs
10. Six months release cycle
11. The “ugly” text-based installer
Computers:
1. DELL Inspiron 510m
2. AMD Athlon clone PC
3. P-III clone PC
Edited 2005-12-07 13:55
> 2. One CD
All distros can be installed from only the first CD.
Others are distributed for convenience (dialup users, etc..)
> 3. Synaptic
This is from Debian.
> 7. sudo
MacOSX alike. Although all desktop distro should do that.
> 9. free CDs
Free shipping ?
>> 9. free CDs
> Free shipping ?
I received 50 installer CDs and 50 live CDs a few weeks ago. Cost = $0.00
I guess the only cost is my electrical and internet bills when I surf to https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ to order those CDs.
I’m in Malaysia anyway. (South East Asia country, south of Thailand, north of Singapore)
I agree with the first 10 points. The eleventh really doesn’t matter that much to me. 🙂
How many years more will debian ( and derivates ) stick to that ugly and old looking instaler? Look at Mandriva/Suse/OSX/Windows installers, they sure look more “new”. I’ve been using linux for years and years, and have loose my hopes. IMO the only threat to Windows dominance is OSX. The solution to Linux, again IMO:
– Less distributions ( join forces!!!! )
– Universal package management
– Point and click everywhere
– Ease of use and eye candy ( just like OSX)
Sorry for my bad english.
Maybe not too many more years. Some screenshots of a work-in-progress graphical installer for Debian can be seen here:
english:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=486&slide=1…
screenshots of some other languages:
https://debian.polito.it/downloads/d-i_gtk_snapshots_nonlatin/
Usability and user-friendliness gain from this “graphical” installer will be zero. Since it rather faithfully reproduces text-based one.
I’m fine with the current Ubuntu installer, but I’m afraid it’s not newbie-ready, as opposed to, say, Mandrake or Fedora.
quite pretty – but who spends a lot of time looking at installers? – people with nothing much to do on their boxes except install? sad.
I just wanted to point out since you mentioned about the installers that Windows from a CD install on a clean system is still text based for at least 1/2 the install.
I don’t think Debian/Ubuntu is any farther back by their installer; it gets the job done. And since they’re working on a graphical installer, so much the better.
“Point and click everywhere”
What and plague linux with the same spyware problems as windows has?!?
Hoping that the “industry” open their eyes and pockets to pc-bsd and forget this distro madness.
…and more and more of them are BSDs too.
In case anyone haven’t notice, let me state for the record that I am an Ubuntu user and a big fan of the Human/Brown GNOME theme.
One thing that I don’t like seeing is some people marketing Ubuntu as the perfect GNU/Linux distro. There is no such thing as the perfect distro.
Any newbie to GNU/Linux that ask what distro he/she should be using are best answered with “here’a a list of a few distro that I think you can start trying out, but at the end of the day… use what suits you best or what you like.”
One thing that I don’t like seeing is some people marketing Ubuntu as the perfect GNU/Linux distro. There is no such thing as the perfect distro.
A very good point, though some distros certain make it easier to live with their imperfections than others.
Any newbie to GNU/Linux that ask what distro he/she should be using are best answered with “here’a a list of a few distro that I think you can start trying out, but at the end of the day… use what suits you best or what you like
That’s very hard to do in the real world. A non-technical person wants a Linux distro on their PC and asks a friend to help them, for example. It isn’t very helpful to give them a list of candidates and disappear. Better to use your judgement, install what you sincerely think is best for them, and explain that there are plenty of alternatives if they don’t like your choice. At least that way they will have got started, rather than staring at a list of names that mean nothing to them.
GNOME looks like GNOME. There are no stupid logos replacing the Gnome foot or anything like that, such as other distros do. Keeping software as stock as possible is very important to me.
it is!
Care to provide us with any reasons for your opinion? Or are you just trolling?
Bill
Because apt-get is great
Because people are sick of RPM’s
Sites like ubuntuguide.org make using it dead simple
KDE feels cheap these days and people are starting to migrate to gnome. People want professional grade and gnome feels more professional.
Rat Hat started to drop support with Fedora.
Gentoo does not “just work” and apt-get is just as easy as portage.
Free CD’s.
Only 1 CD (instead of 4) required to install.
The last few releases of Mandriva before Ubuntu were underwhelming.
SuSE never used to be free and is RPM/KDE based
People in the Linux community have never taken Linspire seriously, and the name change didn’t help them.
Slackware is still Slackware.
The only thing I am surprised about is that Debian was not more popular before Ubuntu came around.
Edited 2005-12-07 14:27
“Slackware is still Slackware. ”
… and let’s hope it will always remain … Slackware
“Because apt-get is great
Because people are sick of RPM’s”
As apt does work with RPM, as RPM does have some advantages over DEB on 64-bit systems and as there are a lot of other distros out there using DEBs, this is utter nonesense.
“Sites like ubuntuguide.org make using it dead simple”
As do similar sites for other distributions.
Besides, ubuntuguide isn’t officially supported and ubuntu even warns against using it.
“KDE feels cheap these days and people are starting to migrate to gnome. People want professional grade and gnome feels more professional.”
Just a stupid flamebait and of course simply ignoring that Kubuntu is officially part of Ubuntu, that Mark Shutleworth (sp?) is using Kubuntu on his desktop and that it was decided at the last Ubuntu conference (UBZ) to put even more effort into Kubuntu.
“Rat Hat started to drop support with Fedora.”
It’s Red and you get as much support with Fedora as you get with Ubuntu, if you don’t pay for the support, so what’s your point?
So all in all, you don’t make a single point that makes sense and, what is even worse, you are giving Ubuntu a bad name by your uninformed, inflamatory trolling.
how well does apt-get work over dialup modem.. or no internet connection at all?
Can I just pop down my newsagent and buy a magazine with a linux cover cd rom on it. Pop it in my machine and update my software…
The model of apt-get falls down quickly when you don’t have super fast, unlimited broadband.
I don’t want to have to relearn the computing paradigm, I just want work, browse the web, play games and do “stuff”.
Ubuntu will send you the disks for free.
how well does apt-get work over dialup modem.. or no internet connection at all?
The model of apt-get falls down quickly when you don’t have super fast, unlimited broadband.
Installed Ubuntu on a friends pc. His using a dialup modem. No complains from him so far. apt-get downloads new/updated apps as fast as web browser downloads installers.
Running any OS without a fast internet connection looks hard today regardless what OS you use. In all cases you have to download patches or service packs that tend to be quite big rather frequently.
“As apt does work with RPM, as RPM”
Yes, and I have used it. But I prefer deb’s apt-get.
“Besides, ubuntuguide isn’t officially supported and ubuntu even warns against using it.”
Sure Ubuntu is not the only distro with community support, but I just don’t see how it could get any easier than ubuntuguide.
“Just a stupid flamebait and of course simply ignoring that Kubuntu is officially part of Ubuntu”
You want flaimebait? KDE sucks. If I want fisher price I can stick to XP. Sure you can change it (I did), but defaults are everything. BTW. Most Ubuntu users are probably using the Gnome version.
“It’s Red and you get as much support with Fedora as you get with Ubuntu”
I didn’t mean paid support, I have used some of the Fedora Core releases and they were less polished than the previous Red Hat releases. This is my opinion but I am not the first to say it.
Also many people seem to forget that you can’t fairly compare the strengths of 10 other produts to 1 product.
So many distros seem to be a few annoyances away from greatness. Other distros might do those few things better but introduce their own quirks.
I think Ubuntu is great becasue they do a combination of many different things well.
Edited 2005-12-07 15:40
Mythbuster:
Because people are sick of RPM’s
Like dependancy hell? That only means those users don’t know how package manager works. FYI, dpkg is the true Debian packager manager.
FreeBSD uses Gnome2.12.1 and KDE3.4, It is fast..it auto detect most of the WLAN cards…mostly it has very very good documentation where Linux is far far behind. Mainly no incompatability between distros..there is only one
(K)ubuntu is 100% focused on a particular desktop. That’s the main point IMHO. New version of Gnome or KDE ? Less than 24 hours later packages are ready to go. That makes a huge difference with most distros (I didn’t say all of them of course). The same for leading apps on Gnome or Kde. That is really a key point to attract a bunch of users.
Not sure free cds are the plus here since most people can download cds in no time nowadays. Plus, they ship only ubuntu cds and not kubuntu yet.
Just my 2 cents.
I’m primarily an XP user who dabbles in Penquinology just to see if Linux is indeed the MS slayer the linux community keeps saying.
I’ve mainly used Fedora, Mandrake-‘Driva, and now a couple versions of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu definitely is the easiest, hassle-free of the 3 for non-linux folks like myself.
It’s painlessly installed itself on my 64bit AMD box (in 32 bit mode) and on an old 450MHz generic box.
Networked with no problems, got updates with no problems, and to tell the truth, the brown interface is actually pleasing after seeing all the BLUE gui-s that seem to be the norm.
As for it being perfect. Nah. Nothing is perfect.
my 2¢ worth
“Ubuntu” is an ancient African word meaning, “I can’t configure Slackware”.
I am running the AMD64 version of Ubuntu on VMWARE5.5 (it wont run native on my ECS RS482-M pc.)
It was harder to installer in VMWARE than Suse, Fedora or Knoppix as it did not automount the VMWARE tools and X was trashed at startup, plus there is no root.
I burnt the tools to a physical cd.
Well it is nice enough to use but the colour, YUK, brown really is ugly, it is probably the uggliest looking Linux there is.
It may sound strange, but it makes me happy.
It may sound strange, but it makes me happy.
Same feelings here
Funny, I spent the full last week with Ubuntu. Finally, I had the same problems as with other distros I tested. The more I test distros, the more I have the feeling Linux is a lottery.
It’s got the most hype due to marketing, but there’s really nothing special about Ubuntu.
What hype? What marketing? Have you ever seen an Ubuntu ad when you go to Linux sites? Have you seen promotions for Ubuntu being run by Connonical? No. It’s all from word of mouth. From users that are happy with it and tell other people, write favorable reviews and make websites about it.
ubuntuforums.org and ubuntuguide.org were both started by ordinary users, not the Ubuntu people.
Even the free cds would not be a success if it weren’t for word of mouth.
“What hype?” The hype is referring to all of the “fanboys” that are going nuts over it, via “word of mouth”. Not to mention article after article being written about Ubuntu/KUbuntu.
“What marketing?” Do you not consider giving away free CD’s marketing? That is marketing, and it really is good marketing. I’ve got a couple and given a few away to people.
However, I stand by my statement that there is not anything special about the distro. Personally, it wouldn’t install on two of my machines (1 desktop and 1 laptop). The Live CD ran fine, but the install died on both for some reason. Ubuntu and Linspire are the only two that refused to install on my laptop, whereas, Ubuntu is the only one that would not install on my desktop. I’ve tried Mandriva, Fedora Core, Suse, Knoppix (would have figured Ubuntu would have installed fine because both are Debian based, are they not?), Linspire, and Slackware, and all installed fine on my desktop. Suse is my distro of choice, simply because it is the most polished, and has the best hardware detection (in my experience).
“The hype is referring to all of the “fanboys” that are going nuts over it, via “word of mouth”. Not to mention article after article being written about Ubuntu/KUbuntu. ”
Fine. There’s some hype. But there’s a big difference between hype generated by a company for it’s product and hype generated by satisfied users of the product. The second is much more genuine and holds more weight. If you tell a friend why they should buy a certain car or stereo is that hype or you just giving advice?
“Do you not consider giving away free CD’s marketing? That is marketing, and it really is good marketing. I’ve got a couple and given a few away to people.
”
But you asked for the cds. They didn’t just come to your door unsolicited. And it wasn’t an ad on a website or magazine that made you want to ask for them. The idea came from someone else who had tried Ubuntu and liked it. Without satisfied users those free cds would be piled up in some warehouse.
The amount of hype and marketing that goes into Ubuntu is miniscule compared to any commercial distro.
About your lack of success on installing Ubuntu: no distro works on all hardware. I’ve had distros fail on me, including Debian, through no fault of my own. But I don’t go around saying every distro that did succesfully install is therefore better. Given the praise that Ubuntu has gotten on hardware detection and testimonials about successful installs on hardware that had trouble with all other distros I come to the conclusion that yours is a rare case. Like another poster here I was amazed that Ubuntu installed on my old-world mac flawlessly and detected and configured parts of it that even Yellowdog (which is focused on ppc) didn’t.
I use both Ubuntu and Suse. And actually Debian on my servers, used to have Slackware. Suse is very good with hardware, laptops etc. But it too has it’s problems.
Suse must be the slowest Linux distro ever. It takes forever to do anything, be it startup or YAST. KDE springs so many subprocesses I have to play games with ICEWM to get enough memory on my 512mb machine. Also Suse feels too much restricted to the offical repositories and its future feels uncertain with Novell screwing around.
The big thing with Ubuntu is that it is good at pretty much everything. Speed, usablility, hardware, thousands of (Debian) packages with only the right ones pre-installed. And the Gnome desktop is clean, no horrible menu clutter like Debians infamous “Debian menu”. And that the wiki documentation contains mostly desktop-oriented stuff helps spread Ubuntu to the Windows world. The only problem I’ve had with Ubuntu is that it’s not as easy to compile stuff on it than for example Slackware.
“What hype? What marketing? Have you ever seen an Ubuntu ad when you go to Linux sites? Have you seen promotions for Ubuntu being run by Connonical? No. It’s all from word of mouth. From users that are happy with it and tell other people, write favorable reviews and make websites about it. ”
Canonical actually bought up quite a few distributions silently and generated hype by having a marketing team write reviews which appeared grass root.
“Canonical actually bought up quite a few distributions silently and generated hype by having a marketing team write reviews which appeared grass root.”
I have always suspected, that this was the case. Acting like grass roots is a new trend in marketing. It reminds me of the Sony Ericsson cellphone campaign where they had actors playing satisfied Sony Ericsson camera phone customers, asking people to take photos of them and their girl/boyfriend at tourist photo spots.
You got any proof of that?
“Canonical actually bought up quite a few distributions silently and generated hype by having a marketing team write reviews which appeared grass root.”
So tell me, what distributions did it buy?
I only remember Mark Shuttleworth investing in the South African ImpiLinux
and that was not silently, it was posted on the frontpage of ubuntu.com…
If you don’t reply to this, it only proofs you wrong…
I think the reason for the Ubuntu success is focus on one desktop. Most people chose one desktop, Gnome, KDE, XFE…
Ubuntu have separate distributions for each of them. This means that the user is presented with a consistent GUI.
Another reason is that Ubuntu just works.
Yet, another reason was that they started out with Gnome and had Live CDs available. As Gnome tend to go for good functionality on basic stuff rather many new Linux users got surprised on how easy it was to run Linux.
The “just works” impression is much more important than advanced features when attracting new users.
and how ubuntu doesnt support it. yeah I mean it exists, but it has no video. no sound. ninety percent of the programs dont even get supported.so I’m basically screwed. I like everything else though……
I’ve got the 64-bit version of Kubuntu installed on my amd64 laptop, and I’ve got sound, video, and the vast majority of programs working for it. For 32-bit only programs (i.e. Flash and some win32 codecs such as Quicktime/Sorensen), I’ve setup an ia32 chroot which works quite well.
I agree that amd64 is a bit more complicated, but not as much as you seem to indicate. In any case you can run the 32-bit version of Ubuntu on your amd64 machine if you like, so I fail to see what the problem is…
okay let me clear somefin up. When I said “support” I ment that the programs list doesnt have all of the binaries for all those programs. and the video and audio arent working (because totem crashes upon opening). the audio I/O layer doesnt work either. on everything except for sound juicer ripper.
Which means that I have to go through and find every little rpm, every little bit of source code for xine, audacity, xmms, kino, cinelerra, yafray, ….and compile them. then I have to figure out where alll the permissions got f*cked up somewhere. Then I have to find a way to remove totem (which may mean removing gnome and putting something else there because gnome requires it for the api to work).then I have to put everything together.
I got ubuntu because I thought it was linux for human beings. Not because I wanted a repeat of slackware, fedora, mandrake, or gentoo. Linux is an awesome Os, sertainly more staible than anything microsoft ever made. But only as long as your willing to fill in every gaping hole of doooom.
Ubuntu shows promise, but it needs to finish these simple little tiny problems.
peace out
I think it’s the things that a default Ubuntu installation doesn’t offer that make it so attractive. You don’t have to pick from ten browsers and twenty text editors. The choices are made for you, and everything works well together. This is a feature that annoys people, especially the kind of tinkerers who frequent this site, but I love it, it saves me from constantly worrying about weather I’d be better served by the features of x-y-z.
I’m trying to get out of the business of wrestling with my computer altogether. The only reason I used Ubuntu for the last six months is because my windows partition died and I couldn’t find the SATA driver disk to reinstall. Ubuntu detected those drivers out of the box and with the new user install script I was up and going in forty five minutes with only one reboot. That, friends, is almost as easy as the mac.
and how ubuntu doesnt support it. yeah I mean it exists, but it has no video. no sound. ninety percent of the programs dont even get supported.so I’m basically screwed. I like everything else though……
Not bad although i strongly recommend SuSE 10 retail.
Take an hour to install (K)ubuntu and it takes about 10 minutes to install an actual user friendly distro like Linspire?
Then you have to get online and follow some commands to add repositories to the system, which should be there already if the distro is supposed to ‘ just work ‘. Once you do that, within minutes you have dependancy issues. Way too much is done from the command line (its 2005 people.. come on.)
Linspire?
*hysterical laughter leading into choking on hot coffee*
I think it is popular since it is easy to use and does everything for you which makes it perfect for newbies and casual users. I prefer Fedora since it has more advanced options. I also dislike the overly preachy tone of Ubuntu’s website which keeps reminding me we are the community.
Also what has made it rise quickly is a lot of money funneling into their organization from that rich benefactor guy. I forget his name. Money talks.
1) It is not an “everything but the kitchen sink” distro. I don’t have 3 browsers, 6 text editors, 3 music programs.
It ships with one. The one that JUST WORKS.
2) Hardware support. I’m running Ubuntu 5.10 for PPC. I’m an “afterthought” in the grand scheme of ‘buntu and I had better hardware support than from YDL, a distro that specializes in Mac hardware.
It. Just. Works. (And when it doesn’t, see #4 and #5)
3) Gnome. (I’m no fan of KDE). Ubuntu makes it very easy to pick which DE you want. I don’t have to download and then switch to Gnome.
4) Asshat free forums. Telling somebody to RTFM earns a smack down from the mod.
It’s a place where a clueless n00b is not treated as annoying leper, and is instead nicely pointed to TFM, and if said n00b doesn’t understand what TFM says, somebody will explain what it means.
5) Excellent use of wiki for documentation. (TFM is searchable!)
6) Excellent website layout. The homepage is well designed and easy to navigate. I don’t have to hunt around several pages to find the wiki or the forums.
—
Other than an install problem I’m having with Opera, it took me about as much time to get Ubuntu set up the way I want as it took me to set up my OS X desktop.
It’s the linux that doesn’t constantly get in my way. While it’s not as smooth and polished as OS X, for the most part, like OS X, it steps aside and lets me get to work.
1. Good user-centric configuration admin tools based on for the most part on distro-neutral souces like GST.
2. This is a big one but restricted modules. No re-compiling madwifi drivers for every kernel update.
3. apt-get and Synaptic are simply nicier and for some reason on my box faster in use than yum and the graphic equivs on Fedora.
4. No candy-coated fisher price blue-based icon themes. Yes, they can use lighter nicier looking browns imho. Earth colors do not have to always reek of the color of poo. But … at least its not another blue themed distro.
5. Wide availability of packages. Really nice variety and most work right out of the box.
6. I prefer gnome and Ubuntu by default is a gnome-based distro. Yes, I know about Kubuntu.
Problems? Yeah, sound is a pain in gnome by default and still sounds kind of crappy in Ubuntu and multiple sounds at once? Forget about it.
I am not saying Ubuntu is better than Debian by default or Gentoo or Fedora. No, really I am not. A distro like an OS is a personal decision and all the reasons above are my reasons for using Ubuntu not why you should use Ubunu or why its superior or some crap.
I like the other guy that posted who said it just made him happy.
Maybe the above is just a rationalization of that.
The one thing all of geedkdom seems to forget is that the question is not what an OS can/cannot do so much as how easily it can be done. Can/cannot do is only of concern to geeks, the common user (usually) only cares about ease of use, this is why Windows owns the desktop OS market and this is why Ubuntu is gaining popularity.
Windows gained power since it was bundled with PC’s for years and if a computer company tried to bundle a competing os like linux or os2 Microsoft went as far as threatoning them not to do business with them. It wasn’t all about just working. It was about being there first, using every tactic to keep it that way (both ethical/unethical), and locking people into a closed, proprietary system that kept them coming back for me. If it was all about ease of use the Mac would have won the OS market.
So when is Ubuntu going to update their software? It seems they take AGES to get things up to date. Where’s the new FireFox 1.5, MySQL 5, OpenOffice 2? I know anyone can update it themselves the old fashion way, but if you’re talking about a distro that is so easy to use, then please update your software so people can update easily.
Too bad there’s not wide acceptance of a universal installer. Something like Klik can really help out.
The problem with Firefox 1.5 is that Ubuntu promised that all its software would work as given (windows requires programs like Firefox to keep track of themselves, other Linux distros presumably aren’t as worried about plugin breakage). Firefox is one of those programs the Ubuntu project guarantees, and Firefox 1.5 breaks compatability with other pieces of software they guarantee, plus it requires new versions of other libraries just to run.
So, they could update all the libraries and update all the other pieces of software (provided that software’s been rewritten to work) and then fix problems OTHER programs have with the new libraries, but now it becomes a problem on the level of a full system update, and they’re already doing one with “Dapper Drake”.
I don’t know about OpenOffice 2; that change ought to be a bit more minor, but I’m pretty sure the rationale is the same.
every other desktop I’ve used. only with graphic designers with a brown fetish
The update program is kinda ok but it should be able to download/upgrade in the background (no taskbar entry) just like MS’s updater. beyond that.. the gnome system tools are breaky as hell. it wasn’t able to configure my sound to work out of box (audigy 2) and it uses the absolute maximum resolution available to the monitor as the system default. it uses wacky sized fonts for the login fields on the GDM login screen. it doesn’t use a face browser for the default gdm (typing in a username is lame, thats why windows and mac osx ditched it). I could ramble for 2 days straight about everything that makes ubuntu just as annoying as any other gnome desktop. But I still use my gnome desktop for 40 hrs a week so its not all bad. I have no doubt that someday gnome will catch up with other modern desktops but it sure isn’t today.
Offtopic, but does anyone know which distro linus torvalds uses? I saw that he used red hat at one point, so does this mean he now uses fedora?
“Offtopic, but does anyone know which distro linus torvalds uses? I saw that he used red hat at one point, so does this mean he now uses fedora?”
There was alot of press a few months ago about how he uses an apple G5, so that narrows it down. Out of all the distros with ppc versions I can name (gentoo, yellowdog, ubuntu, debian, mandriva?) I would guess debian.
I wasn’t impressed. I installed it and though wow this is nice. Two days later everytime I clicked on something to do with system administration it would ask for my root password and then not launch. All GUI controls went bye bye.
So I reinstalled SuSE 9.3 and all works well. 10 didn’t like my laptops ACPI implimentation.
Ubuntu is a very good Linux distro, but, as will other distros, it still has its problems. Here’s an example of where it falls down:
For my background, I have been running Gentoo as my sole OS for work and home for almost two years. I run Fedora, CentOS and Ubuntu for development and deployment. So I think I’m fairly adept at Linux for general use, though by no means a guru.
My laptop drive has recently failed and needs RMAing, so I’ve been using a Kubuntu live CD for the last few days. It’s very good, the best Live CD I’ve used. BUT, I can’t, after a few hours of sporadic attempts, get my wireless to work. I know about eth0, the startup scripts, the necessary driver, and the wireless config. I’ve looked at them and also made some sense of the networking configs split over multiple GUIs that make little logical sense to a layman. Wireless still isn’t working.
This isn’t a criticism of Ubuntu per-se, but rather a criticim of a Linux distro that claims to be ‘for humans’. Sure, I will probably get it working after looking at some forums and asking for some advice, but the point is that Ubuntu simply isn’t usable for humans in general. Just as other Linux distos aren’t, but they don’t claim to be for humans!
I think the editor is right – Ubuntu is spectacular with its quick growth from nothing in a year.
My take: I downloded and inststalled it a year ago and since then i have upgraded twice to 5.10 (no hazzle). Before I used RH9 (not much) for a year.
Why Ubuntu? nothing special but it had a fresh appeal with the people around it and its goal.
After installing I found the http://www.ubuntuguide.org was the new thing missing with my previous Linux experience. Cut and paste and in a short while all multimedia, NTFS partition read etc was working! No hounting for help on the Internet!
Later on, if I had some problem I always found answers on the Ubuntu forums. Yes, usually good answers that helped me due to the fact that other had the same problems or requests. Further, later on the main obstacles was the backport repository with a firefox update which later on was broken by a security update, but with the forums i recoverd my system.
Finally, I think the community around Ubuntu is the key to the success. So the question is – How do you (or how is it) build the winning community, and keep it that way?
Thats the five dollar question!
…it might have something to do with the availability of the cd’s?
At my college we’re drowning in the dual CD-set (live-cd and install-cd), and it’s spreading like a disease
Whether or not it’s being deployed is difficult to say, but I’ve run into quite a few runners.up-geeks who have decided to try Linux again, this time with Ubuntu, since it’s everywhere, you look.
I’d vote for the availability as the main reason.
Generally speaking, colored background character displays are not considered graphical for their major limitation of being unable to display a “graphic” ie a bitmap. They can only display colored text…
But there’s no reason for an installer to be graphical other than to make a user feel at ease and safe.
I’ve been using Linux for over three years now, but because I live in a bandwidth challenged country I have a hard time getting pure Debian in any flavour. I used Libranet for a long time, but apart from the Adminmenu, there was little to distinguish it from a Debian Unstable/Experimental install. I received my Hoary CDs a few months back, and while I was quite amazed by the fact that it got much of the stuff working out of the box I never could reconcile myself to the fact that it wouldn’t let me tinker as much as a pure Debian or a Libranet (which I think is the distro most compatible with Debian) install would. Since then I’ve found myself completely discarding Ubuntu repositories and only using Debian Unstable/Experimental reponsitories (NEWBIE WARNING: Don’t try this unless you know what you’re doing), and while it’s required quite a degree of interaction on my part it’s been a much more satisfactory experience for me.
However, I have to say it: Ubuntu’s a GREAT distro, especially for beginners. But be warned – if you want complete control over your system you’re better off looking elsewhere.
As a fellow long time Debian user I must ask, where have you found that (K)Ubuntu limits your ability to tinker? I can see where you are coming from with regard to servers, as plain vanilla Debian allows greater flexibility on the initial set up, but for a general purpose desktop I haven’t found (K)Ubuntu to be constricting.
And again from the point of view of someone who’s been using Debian on and off since “Slink-and-a-half” (and a handful of Debian derivatives such as Libranet), the great thing about (K)Ubuntu compared to plain Debian, aside from the fact that it saves me about 15 minutes worth of initial configuration time in order to set a desktop, is that it removes some of the headaches from the process of running a Sid installation. Especially, and as anyone who has run Sid would know, a weekly “apt-get update” will often pull down in excess of 1GB of new packages. There’s simply too much package churn in Sid to make it suitable as a general desktop. Testing tends to break catastrophically about once a year a or so (usually X, glibc, or GCC ugrades) and hasn’t traditionally recieved regualar security updates. And, finally, Stable simply moves to glacially to be a good desktop.
Ubuntu’s appeal is that it is essentially Debian, but with a release policy well suited to the needs of desktop usage rather than infrastructure servers.
“And again from the point of view of someone who’s been using Debian on and off since “Slink-and-a-half” (and a handful of Debian derivatives such as Libranet), the great thing about (K)Ubuntu compared to plain Debian, aside from the fact that it saves me about 15 minutes worth of initial configuration time in order to set a desktop, is that it removes some of the headaches from the process of running a Sid installation. Especially, and as anyone who has run Sid would know, a weekly “apt-get update” will often pull down in excess of 1GB of new packages. There’s simply too much package churn in Sid to make it suitable as a general desktop. Testing tends to break catastrophically about once a year a or so (usually X, glibc, or GCC ugrades) and hasn’t traditionally recieved regualar security updates. And, finally, Stable simply moves to glacially to be a good desktop.”
Exactly. When I first tried a Debian derived distro (at that time, Mepis 2003), I was absoutely thrilled with the instant access to over 15,000 packages, and done so very easily with either the command line (apt-get install foo) or the GUI frontends KPackage or Synaptic.
Because of this, as well as the well renowned Debian openness and stability, I jumped on the Debian bandwagon, leaving behind my tried and true Mandrake and RH/Fedora. I used more up to date Mepis releases, as well as Knoppix, Kanotix, pure Debian Sarge, then, of course, Ubuntu.
But I started noticing the inherant problems of using Debian testing or unstable. Major system files would become screwed up. Installing something that is on a new release cycle of Sid would cause apt to try to remove a boat load of other stuff (like the entire KDE when I was simply trying to install GEdit). The testing and unstable repositories are extremely volitile, and being that apt resolves dependencies and keeps everything in sync, installing new stuff can cause your system to get inadveratly hosed. So basically, using Debian testing or unstable is a major crap shoot, and usually leads to eventual problems.
Thus, I think it’s best to either go with pure Debian stable (and stay there), or go with a Debian derivative that manages it’s own repos (like Linspire, with it’s kick-butt Click-n-Run warehouse), or to go with one of the big RPM distros (Mandriva, SuSE, Fedora).
I went back to my tried and true Mandriva – better (more stable, more trouble free) package repos, great RPMDrake (equal to or better than Synaptic), great Madriva Control Center (superior to anything in Ubuntu or any other Deb-based distro), great installer (beautiful, easy, powerful, fast), great speed and stability, and great look-n-feel.
Exactly. When I first tried a Debian derived distro (at that time, Mepis 2003), I was absoutely thrilled with the instant access to over 15,000 packages, and done so very easily with either the command line (apt-get install foo) or the GUI frontends KPackage or Synaptic. [snip] But I started noticing the inherant problems of using Debian testing or unstable.
Yes that has also been my experience on Debian (I am typing this on Sid) though I think it is possible to remain OK with Sid for a long while if you are careful about upgrading packages and make use of pinning – apt-get upgrade etc being a complete no-no. However, I do keep SuSE 10 up to date and ready to roll on another partition just in case.
I guess Ubuntu is testament to the notion that it is often easier to start with a clean sheet and a new team. Trying to organize a “deb desktop” branch from within pure Debian sounds like a job for Sisyphus given their traditions and already overstretched resources. It’s a great pity really as I think they’ve completely missed the boat on a chance to make their name, as pure Debian, on desktop Linux but the good news is that we have Ubuntu and others to go with instead.
But I started noticing the inherant problems of using Debian testing or unstable. Major system files would become screwed up. Installing something that is on a new release cycle of Sid would cause apt to try to remove a boat load of other stuff (like the entire KDE when I was simply trying to install GEdit). The testing and unstable repositories are extremely volitile, and being that apt resolves dependencies and keeps everything in sync, installing new stuff can cause your system to get inadveratly hosed. So basically, using Debian testing or unstable is a major crap shoot, and usually leads to eventual problems.
This doesn’t mirror my own experience at all. The last time I did a clean reinstall was in spring 2002. I installed Debian Stable, but almost immediately upgraded to Unstable, which I’ve been running since.
I can honestly say I’ve had very few problems running Unstable for almost four years now. I do a ‘apt-get update;apt-get upgrade’ about once a week, and currently have 1707 packages installed, which is about 1/10 of the total amount of packages available in Unstable.
The one precaution I take is that I always keep old packages around in /var/cache/apt/archives for quite some time so that I can easily downgrade individual packages should an upgrade give me trouble. This has, as far as I can remember, solved every problem I have ever had.
That said, maybe I’ve dodged many bullets since I use neither KDE nor Gnome, apart from a few programs like k3b and gnumeric.
“This doesn’t mirror my own experience at all. The last time I did a clean reinstall was in spring 2002. I installed Debian Stable, but almost immediately upgraded to Unstable, which I’ve been running since.
I can honestly say I’ve had very few problems running Unstable for almost four years now. I do a ‘apt-get update;apt-get upgrade’ about once a week, and currently have 1707 packages installed, which is about 1/10 of the total amount of packages available in Unstable. “
That’s probably the problem I had. I never tried it with pure Debian stable, doing a full upgrade to testing, then unstable, then doing the apt-get update and apt-get upgrade once a week.
That’s probably the only way to do it without many problems.
I’ve only ever done it with Deb derivatives, like Ubuntu (which has it’s own non-compatibile repos), Mepis (which is a testing / unstable hybrid – very dangerous) and Kanotix (which is pure Deb Sid, but I never did the apt-get update/upgrade technique).
I’ll have to try it the “right” way sometime.
Hmmm, well, “tinker” is a relative term, I suppose. To give you an example, I can’t control CUPS from my browser in Ubuntu.
_Hmmm, well, “tinker” is a relative term, I suppose. To give you an example, I can’t control CUPS from my browser in Ubuntu._
Fair enough. Although the CUPS webadmin can be easily enabled by adding the cupsys user to the shadow group and then restarting cupsys.
Ubuntu is all about hype hype hype.
Ubuntu itself is not special. Short of a co-ordinated colour theme and a decently attractive GNOME theme as default, Ubuntu is just like any distro.
I found Ubuntu to be extremely slow compared to Windows XP/Server 2003 and other Linuxes. After a straight boot, wired RAM usage was at 150 MB, which is unacceptably fat. Someone with 256 MB of RAM is now left with less than 100 MB (factoring in active RAM) to run their programs. OS X 10.4.3 takes up 1/3 as much RAM after boot. And yes, I know how to run memory usage numbers in UNIX — no one better pipe in with “but that’s the disk cache!”, because wired RAM is not disk cache.
Every year there’s a distro that is hyped up and adopted by a lot of people. I remember years where those distros were Slackware, Fedora Core, Gentoo (2003/2004!), and 2005 is Ubuntu’s year. Nothing has changed. The hype gets to people, and then people try to justify it by explaining how great it actually is — all while being blind to the fact that it’s just another Linux with different graphics and a different set of stock apps.
Get a life, people. It’s just another Linux distro. Nothing more, nothing less. I’ve got Arch Linux installed on a medium-end machine in my basement, and it is splendid. Fast, low fat, quick install, nice package management.
_Ubuntu itself is not special. Short of a co-ordinated colour theme and a decently attractive GNOME theme as default, Ubuntu is just like any distro._
Ubuntu isn’t necessarily special, but Debian is. Ubuntu’s success is a result of delivering the advantages of Debian without the headaches that accompany tracking Sid.
“Ubuntu is just like any distro”
“it’s just another Linux with different graphics and a different set of stock apps.”
“It’s just another Linux distro. Nothing more, nothing less”
If it’s just another distro then it should be easy for me to switch to another distro and be just as happy right? Well lets try:
1. I like Debian based distros. I’ve tried other systems. Prefer Debian. Don’t want to use an RPM based one. Not going back to Gentoo. Not going to use an alternative package manager like pac-man or conary. Nothing wrong with those, but I like apt and it works fine.
2. I like GNOME. I like it so much that I want the new version as soon as it’s released. I also don’t want it to be the secondary desktop environment of whatever distro I use.
There. Two simple requirements. Debian plus always having the current GNOME as default environment. Go find me another distro that has that. Should be easy right?
”
1. I like Debian based distros. I’ve tried other systems. Prefer Debian. Don’t want to use an RPM based one. Not going back to Gentoo. Not going to use an alternative package manager like pac-man or conary. Nothing wrong with those, but I like apt and it works fine. ”
APT works fine on RPM based systems. So this is a silly point
“I found Ubuntu to be extremely slow compared to Windows XP/Server 2003 and other Linuxes.”
I think not. While XP is extremely fast, on the same machine 2003 server is slower than Ubuntu (P4 2.4 , 512M). XP is extremely fast, then comes Ubuntu and then 2003 Server. I have tried everything, disabling services etc. Ubuntu is faster than 2003 Server. Which is odd. At least to me.
Find a distribution with as active forums and community, and the financial stability of ubuntu. Not to mention a leader who has a goal and money to make it happen. This video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1165754797197197496&q=ubun…
will probably change your mind.
I thought he used SUSE w/ KDE. I may be mistaken though.
You express exactly the way I feel. The OS is just simple to set up and it works out of the box without many gripes.
Another bonus is for the average beginner who know nothing about using Linux line commands, synaptic is one of the best things going. You search for the software you made need. Find it. A couple of check marks later and a press of the apply button you have it installed. I like that feature a lot.
Amen.
You’re telling me NOBODY uses Fedora or Mandriva? That they’re somewhere in the 15% “Other” category?
Ruminant evacuation. This is a puff piece for Ubuntu – or the survey is seriously skewed by either self-selection or the area where it was presented.
I was intrigued by this post so looked at the survey myself. Both fedora and mandriva are listed as options (with 26% and 12% respectively).
Have a look again – I think your eyes may have decieved you.
🙂
I am just curious.. its usually arch linux users or gentoo users are complaining ubuntu being a hype …
well maybe it is.. so whats it up to u
we are happy… u r happy.. so why bother
Ubuntu is linux => linux on the desktop sucks => Ubuntu sucks.
Do you want a solid ease of use machine and speed=> Use the best desktop OS available on earth==> WINDOWS XP.
ps. WIN2K is great on old hardware.
AHhahhh hahh hahahhhahaha => wow!
Damn straight! Windows XP is great! I’m with you man (or woman)!
Linux has more drivers by default, requires less playing, requires less setup after installation, and doesn’t crash as much. More importantly, its more fun to play.
Compare this to Windows, system crashes regularly, sure drivers are available, but I have to install them manually from the manufacturer. Most Windows systems drivers and software aren’t installed correctly, so are very unstable, and often difficult to remove.
If I want third party applications, I have to go search on the internet, as apposed to just firing up the package manager of choice that week…
Not to mention the fact that there are no Windows applications I like that I haven’t gotten to run via Wine. Even when I do use Windows, I use Firefox, I use Thunderbird, and I use OpenOffice.org, all things that just appear to work better on Linux anyways.
Windows is crap. Just because you can’t figure out how to use Linux, doesn’t mean its not better in most respects than Windows.
It is possible to run windows XP more safely.
First build a minimal base system of XP, turn of the fancy graphics, stop all services you dont need, make sure your firewall is enabled, now load a new copy of XP into a virtual machine in VMWARE. This will allow you to create clones and snapshots of each and every stage of software installation and also provide a very standard hardware environment for XP to run in.
Once you have a stable version snapshot it.
After using windows for a week, revert to the working snapshot.
Anyone that has issues with Windows XP doesn’t know the OS… oh wait, the same can be said for Linux! (or any other OS)
If Windows XP is locking up on you constantly then you shouldn’t be using it in the first place, my mother can use XP without it locking up.
What a crap do you tell me? What the hell?
I tried to install WinXP Pro on a Fat32 partition, after about a week it locks me out with a failure. WinXP breaks just like nothing.
I searched a lot in internet. Many people experience the same problem. They have no solution. Even Microsoft support has NO SOLUTION.
And don’t ask me why I want to do this. My principle idea was to install this windows parallel to a workstation just for gaming purposes. I would have speed up the system (deactivating unnecessary services) and I would have it crippled in that way, that it has no access to ntfs partition and no partition management features.
You say, MS didn’t mean it serious providing a fat32 install? Hey, they win a hell of money. If they give the possibility to do this, they MUST go on supporting this. This shows no professionality.
So WinXP is no crap? Besides the many other failures as being locked out, if some partition changes occured and many more failures…
another great point: since I regularly use Linux, I noticed, that Linux supports multitasking in a great way. Windows has issues with this. Incredible but true. Try to use multiple windows and programs all eating ram and needing cpu cycles. Windows goes down. Linux slows a bit down, but you are yet able to work with!
So much to your unqualified comment!
btw. I use Ubuntu. I used Windows NT/2k and some time XP on regularly basis.
I want to add: I do not want to say, Windows is hell, but it is also not heaven, and it has clearly its issues.
And please notice: I did not mention the many viruses, as these surely are a problem of Windows popularity.
Linux is yet almost luckily free from this problem.
Linux sure is stable, sure is cool, free and blablabla
But… Games and Applications tie me to windows.
What can i do? I sure can hear my music, watch tv (without rc), play movies, dvds, web surf, email on linux. But i love gamming, the applications that i use for work are windows only.
I don’t belive that will change soon, in fact, i believe the only way to change this is by convincing the softwarehouses to develop for linux. It’s not profitable, agreed? So, maybe when we do have a “code once, run everywhere” solution, for all kind of software, from commercial to games, then stability, freedom, and all the linux advantages will mean something.
Games and Applications tie me to windows.
What can i do?
You can try Cedega.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7609
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid…
DOWNLOAD Windows Vista pre-Beta 2 build 5259: http://windows.czweb.org/show_article.php?id_article=379
A little off subject but…
I wonder why nobody’s tried developing a universal package management system, something extremely simple (and probably XML based)?
I’d love to see the day you can browse to whatever website, download your .upm file, run it, and viola your application is installed and ready to use.
Autopackage and Klik offer such a thing. It’s just that there’s not wide acceptance of it in the Linux community, as they prefer their software to be packaged by their distro.
“I wonder why nobody’s tried developing a universal package management system, something extremely simple (and probably XML based)?”
It’s been done –
Autopackage
Klik
Smart
zeroinstall
All of which have potential and are gaining traction.
As good as things like apt and urpmi are, I think the ulimate solution to package management in desktop Linux is a universal system that installs desktop/end user packages in their own sandbox (where existing libs are not compatible), and leaves system package management to the native manager (apt, yum, urpmi, etc).
For me, Kubuntu replaced my formerly used distro on three machines within less than a hour. I’ve heart of it a long time ago, but just recently thought I’d give it a try, downloaded the AMD4 + the PPC LiveCDs, inserted them into my desktop & my girlfriends iBook – and EVERYTHING worked right from the start. If I close the iBook’s lid, it would go to sleep, if the battery is almost empty, is also goes to sleep to prevent data loss, if I put my USB sticks, OGG players or digital cameras in, they’re auto-detected and an appropiate app is started … I was so impressed, I started downloading the install CDs from within the LiveCD environment and just wiped / of my former distro and installed Kubuntu on all the machines.
Tom
She has a pre-2005 iBook, right?
It’s the model that was the newest last christmas 🙂 Why are you asking?
Tom
Does Ubuntu allow propietary installs, does it have any in its repository? How can you do installs from source, do I have to do it by manual commands, or does Ubuntu provide something for installing stuff from the original source, like say LimeWire, which is only in source form or RPM install? Also, how do you get Java, Flash, Shockwave, etc. installed in Ubuntu?
Ubuntu/Kubuntu are not that bad, but they fail to impress me. Working out of the box? That depends of your needs.
The installation process is fine. I got a localisation problem, but I don’t believe many people would get it (choosing a keyboard layout that wasn’t meant for the chosen language). However, I question the QA done on some packages. On my box, the latest Ubuntu got some broken features (Evo don’t filter spam, Nautilus don’t like SSH shares, what is the point of mounting SMB shares via the GUI if you cannot access them with most applications {although I believe it’s more of a GNOME issue}) while Kubuntu was not very stable (many crashes with Kaffeine, Krita). In both cases, the packages from the universe/multiverse repositories seem to be straight ports from Debian without any QA (Quod Libet wasn’t nice with me, not playing FLACs, taking 20% CPU in playback and freezing randomly; Kdevelop was placed in some cryptic folder in the menu, did not downloaded any program for development {why would I use KDev without GCC or any development library? fortunately I knew their names}; wpa_supplicant was a bitch to configure).
Remarkably, package QA is not the thing that irritates me the most. I had hopes that Ubuntu would go beyond Debian someday. Not only for the GUI, but under the hood. Now, don’t take me wrong. dpkg/apt are nice. Easilly the best packaging system I used. However, I always hated the layout of the userland, especially for the configuration. It doesn’t make any sense to me. To my experience, their assistant for configuring packages is not really helpful. Hand configuration for Debian-specific files is a pain, too. The init system, while standard for Linux, is dated. Numbered symlinks? Maybe in 1980, but not in 2005. It seems rather unsignificant for desktop usage, but remember that Canonical is also aiming servers. After all, sysadmins and power users are included in “humanity”!
All in all, it’s not bad but I believe they got some work to do for offering a pleasant OOB experience for those in the markets they are aiming. Ultimately, I believe their success will depend on their will for flying on their own…
Wow, that was a long rant
Edited 2005-12-08 02:01
It Must Be The Free CD’s over at their shipit site
people do love FREE stuff. plus it works (as long as you don’t fiddle)
Debian (my OS of choice) carries what some percieve as a sort of grumpy “RTFM” type image — somewhat deservingly perhaps, as it isn’t really designed for non-geeks, whereas Ubuntu has a more welcoming and friendly presence which non-geeks and newbies undoubtedly find less intimidating.
While Ubuntu has slightly better hardware detection there isn’t much difference otherwise.
Not to take away from Ubuntu’s thunder, but the reporter claimed that 53% of respondents listed Ubuntu as their desktop of choice, which isn’t quite true. The question was “Which Linux Distributions are you considering or currently running on the desktop?” It is not nearly the same thing. If anything, 53% said that Ubuntu was or may soon be one of their desktops in use, which seems a little more reasonable to me.
I don’t get all the negative posts. Ubuntu’s great for what it is supposed to be. I used it for a few months, well Kubuntu anyways, it worked well enough which was all that I expected from it. Is there something wrong with that?
I don’t know why the hell people get so offended by it. A distribution focused on simplicity and useability gets released, becomes popular even though it’s brown, and that is somehow bad. It generates interest, it generates enthusiasm, it generates new users and it helps advance the linux desktop in general. And that makes it and it worthy of scorn from many of the very same people espousing freedom and choice.
Sometimes I’m convinced the linux community is it’s own worst enemy.
I don’t see the point in giving MS $300 retail for Windows XP Professional when I can get Ubuntu for free.
XP Pro only cost $89 where I live, where do you live?
That was the cost at the local Office Max for the full version, not the upgrade package. There is a price diff between the two.
XP Pro only cost $89 where I live, where do you live?
I’m from Malaysia. A here’s a price list of MS products. The currency is RM (Ringgit Malaysia). To make comparison, a fresh graduate in engineering usually receives a sallary around RM 1,600.00 to RM 1,800.00.
Windows XP Home (OEM) = RM 315.00
Windows Millennium (OEM) = RM 345.00
Windows 98 SE (OEM) = RM 365.00
Windows XP Professional (OEM) = RM 525.00
Windows 2000 Professional (OEM) = RM 545.00
Office 2003 Basic (OEM) = RM 635.00
Office XP Small Business Edition (OEM) = RM 650.00
Frontpage = RM 790.00
Access = RM 835.00
Windows XP Home (Box) = RM 870.00
Office 2003 Small Business Edition (OEM) = RM 898.00
Office 2003 Professional Edition (OEM) = RM 1,190.00
Windows XP Professional (Box) = RM 1,230.00
Office 2003 Standard (Box) = RM 1,370.00
Office 2003 Small Business Edition (Box) = RM 1,570.00
Office 2003 Professional (Box) = RM 1,680.00
Project 2003 Standard (Box) = RM 2,100.00
Windows 2003 Server (OEM) – 5 clients = RM 2,530.00
Project 2003 Professional (Box) = RM 3,500.00
Project 2003 Server – 5 clients = RM 4,998.00
Windows Small Business Server = RM 5,220.00
Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition = RM 13,150.00
SQL Server (Enterprise) – 25 clients = RM 38,878.00
So you see. Free Software does help us a lot financially.
Is what an overhyped fad Ubuntu is.
Is what an overhyped fad Ubuntu is.
It’s the Debian spinoff of this year. The previous was Knoppix, let’s see what comes in 2006.
I had been a long time Red Hat user. In fact, my first initiation to Linux was with RH 5.0. I switched to Debian after being dissappointed by RH 8.0’s bloat/bugs. I loved Debian Woody. It was good for me but, I could not refer it to my colleague (Linux admin, himself) for his desktop – the usual too old versions problem.
In the meantime I tried Mandriva (Mandrake, then), Fedora (buggy, broken) and even SUSE, but, I still preferred the control that I could wield using Debian. Along came Ubuntu, finally, we have a Debian desktop that brings the great work done by Debian. I think now we have a real choice. Personally, I prefer Debian stable for production servers and Ubuntu for desktops. I know of Ubuntu-server.
The Debian project should follow their current way of doing things, but, would recommend having yearly stable releases. Let the Ubuntu community concentrate on the desktop.
Yes, I did experience a few packages that I used from universe/multiverse crashing. But, then these are not the ones that a normal desktop user would want to use under normal circumstances. The base packages are great for the desktop experience.
– Didar
NOTE: I’m biased towards Debian and the CLI