“Canonical’s Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is an excellent Linux-based operating system – so excellent, in fact, that it not only earned eWEEK Labs’ Analyst’s Choice designation but has also become our clear favorite among Linux desktop distributions. This latest Ubuntu release, which became available in June, has won our ardor with a tight focus on desktop usability; an extremely active, helpful and organized user community; and a software installation and management framework that’s unsurpassed on any OS platform.”
Its great and all but a “Press this button to install ATI propietary drivers w/o having to edit text files or compile the kernels or patches manually so you can enjoy of XGL” button is still missing.
No it’s not, it’s called EasyUbuntu.
I’ve also never heard of someone needing to patch and/or compile the kernel in order to install ATI drivers. Next time, you should do more research before trolling…
Then please tell me how can I do it, I’ve tried with no joy.
And wasn’t trolling, I reseached before, take a look to this:
http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/fglrx-installer.html#overvi…
I think you are not the one researshing.
Edited 2006-07-19 22:16
That’s very old.
Here, if you have problems with EasyUbuntu, try the instructions on this page:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Dapper_Installation_Guide
I recommend Method 2, personally.
You can also run the ATI installer. It will work most of the time. Blame ATI for these problems, not Ubuntu. Sorry if I unjustly accused you of trolling, btw.
Cool, I just noticed that there’s a new driver out for Linux (8.26.18) I’ll try it out right now!
Edited 2006-07-19 23:23
Have you tried Automatix?
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=177646
I’ve been running Ubuntu on a laptop with ATI card since Warty–never had any problems.
add/modify this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse
apt-get update && apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
*yawn*
What part of “w/o having to edit text files” don’t you understand? Of course, the absolute majority of the reader on this site should have no problems with somethin as trivial as that, but I don’t think an OS can qualify as Desktop compatible if you have edit text files to use advanced features of that OS.
You can add repositories using Synaptic instead if you prefer not to edit text files.
What part of “w/o having to edit text files” don’t you understand?
Oh my…..
One can open a console and paste&run following command
[command]
sudo echo “deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse” >> /etc/apt/sources.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
[/command]
[PUSH ENTER]
[WAIT]
[oh … what a funny matrix-style screensaver]
[WAIT]
[WAIT]
[DRINK A BEER]
[DONE]
4 easy steps..
Of course, the absolute majority of the reader on this site should have no problems with somethin as trivial as that, but I don’t think an OS can qualify as Desktop compatible if you have edit text files to use advanced features of that OS.
And IMHO console belongs to the desktop and there is nothing wrong it!
If you/they dont like it – go, spend 1000e,buy Windows &Anti* Co. and save us some time
EOT.
Yes but… (and I don’t DISagree with how easy it is to fix) Ubuntu was supposed to be the easy-to-use, simplified linux desktop. (And before you say no, yes it was… they had started out with a roadmap of an OS that you could just install and use to do what it is you can currently do with something like Windows or Mac OS – for basic, day-to-day operations).
So I kind of understand why the poster says what he says.
The fact that there are problems with getting the ATI driver to run is *not* Ubuntu’s fault, it’s ATI’s.
Ubuntu is in fact very easy-to-use. Remember that people for whom “Easy-to-use” is the most important aspect are not likely to install any OS themselves (including Windows or Mac OSX), but that they’ll get a PC with an OS pre-installed.
In any case, one just has to compare the ease with which the NVIDIA driver is installed to understand that the responsibility rests squarely with ATI on this one. (And I say that as an ATI user.)
Whoa!
I wasn’t implying that it was Ubuntu’s fault. I was just pointing out how I can understand what that OTHER poster was saying because part of any operating system’s perceived usefulness will be it’s functionality and/or how it can be added/removed.
Does EasyUbuntu work with Dapper and ATI drivers? I hear great things about the Nvidia drivers, but the ATI drivers have always been a bit of a nightmore.
…Dapper, however, has been the worst experience yet. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a kernel issue, maybe it’s an issue with the version of the drivers in the repo – all I know is if you install fglrx with apt, the drivers simply will not work (accelerated OpenGL for example).
I’ve been a big fan of (k)Ubuntu for three years now (active user since Warty), and I’ve used the ATI drivers throughout. It’s never been simple, and I understand that ATI’s drivers have earned the scorn and ridicule of FOSS users and developers for many years now…
I must say though that most Dapper users with ATI cards I’ve encountered simply cannot get the drivers to work (myself among them). Whether I used the repo versions, download the installer and run it, tell the installer to create dapper packages, etc – they simply don’t work. I’ve edited several of my config files, manually played with kernel modules…I can’t even remember everything posted in the forums on the issue.
XGL is touted by so many – ATI users on a clean install of dapper though simply can’t get a glimpse. It’s made me angry at Dapper as a whole. I know it’s unfair to judge a distro by a single problem that’s not even completely in Ubuntu’s hands…But to any other distros have such a problem? Lots of users have ATI cards, and while the drivers are optional, XGL is changing that.
I have only ever once installed Ubuntu on an laptop with an ATI chipset. It worked flawlessly (this was Breezy). Maybe it’s just because I’m an old die-hard from Debian, but Ubuntu was just dead easy. All my other systems have nvidia cards in them, with a good reason.
I recently scored an X800XT you wouldn’t believe all the stuff I’ve tried to get Xgl working
All with no success. First it was Xgl complaining of an unrecognized option (vt7), then I eventually narrowed it down to Xgl just sitting there with a busy cursor and then eventually crashing.
I managed to get it semi-working with an old copy of Xgl in Ubuntu’s repositories, but it’s amazingly slow & when compiz is started the screen goes completely white and it complains of not being able to bind a texture.
I’d like to able to run the latest CVS.
when I had my 6600GT everything worked flawlessly.
“(…)if you install fglrx with apt, the drivers simply will not work (accelerated OpenGL for example). ”
I never had problems installing the ATI drivers in Ubuntu with apt. However I read somewhere (sorry I don’t have the link at hand) that it might be necessary to create a symlink in order to get accelerated OpenGL:
“sudo ln -s /usr/lib/dri /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri”.
Ubuntu makes it very compelling to make the switch from Windows to Linux. I almost used Ubuntu exclusively every-day, except for a few things that kept me switching back and forth via KVM. MP3’s, Stupid pages that require IE (like my bank), and this annoying habit of not keeping my monitor /video resolution to 1280×1024 – although I can edit or run commands, I could not save the xorg.config to not allow 640×480 or keeep 1280×1024.
I’m going to mostly blame my inexperience.
I’m still positive about Ubuntu – the video problem
is the main killer here.
I suppose I need “command lines for dummies” or learning XORG in a nutshell.
Edited 2006-07-19 22:04
You could not save /etc/X11/xorg.conf? Are you sure you were running the text editor as root?
http://www.linuxcommand.org/
That’ll help with understanding how to navigate around the shell, and then use the tools available to accomplish some cool tricks.
I have converted my desktop full-time as of 2 months ago. I struggle with mp3’s sometimes but I’m getting the hang of gtkpod now. I still have a Windows XP vmware guest just in case.
This will give you IE 5.0, 5.5 or 6.0 plus Flash 9 via wine.
http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/news/
use “sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf”
Also, you can install mp3 drivers. Try this:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.8-mad
use “sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf”
Also, you can install mp3 drivers. Try this:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.8-mad
Yeah, like that’s intuitive
What happened to the whole ease of use thing?
I’m new to this but, would one of these distros happen to have Wine installed and configured by default?. It would be of great help to me.
i think it’s Xandros or Linspire that have that by default. although with most distros its in the repos
Mitarai,
yes you should look better, just because you found a specific and harder procedure to install the ATI drivers on Debian it doesn’t mean that is the usual way to do it for Ubuntu, read https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI .
Sodapop,
Installing wine is just simple as:
sudo apt-get install wine
Or if you prefer do it from the GUI just look for it on the package manager.
Thank you so much sir, I’ll try it.
So now it’s just up to whether you believe these people, or the people who say SuSE is the greatest Linux desktop, or the people who say PCLinuxOS is the best…
Me? They’re probably all awesome.
My thoughts exactly. IHMO, all of the most recent mainstream Linux distributions are incredibly excellent. When I started using Linux (Red Hat 6.2), I couldn’t even imagine that they’d ever get this good. The free software movement has fought a hardware industry that’s largely unwilling to cooperate and the restrictive licensing of proprietary software vendors. In spite of these obstables, they’ve still been able to achieve the vast majority of that smooth, polished experience that I thought would be plain impossible to achieve.
There’s still major obstacles to Linux-based operating systems becoming accepted and supported by the computer industry at large. However, with every hurdle that the free software community overcomes, it becomes that much easier for the industry to meet us by knocking some down from their side. With the quality, breadth, and value offered by distributions like Ubuntu, it must be getting hard for some in the industry to answer the question, “Why not?”
Do you really call this an article? I would call it “free advertising”. The “article” lacks any proof that Ubuntu is better than other distros. No real comparisions, no evaluation done by normal users and a general lack of technical knowledge by the reviewers.
I read it and there were some issues mentioned where I thought: Well, this works immediately with this or that distro but not Ubuntu, but still they consider Ubuntu the champ. Did they get paid by Canonical or what? And that Ubuntu makes software installation easier than any other distro is plain nonsense. Linspire has Click’n Run, Mandriva has Kiosk, Fedora has Pirut, Novells Enterprise Desktop has a new and nice frontend for installing software. There are many options and they all work, unless the user lacks a brain.
There is a reason why I will never consider Ubuntu the best distro for the desktop: Too many bugs, no package-installation options, bad swap setup with the default partitioner, crippled language support, incompatibility with Debian, inability (!) to launch a safe init 3 session for recovery tasks (there is only the stupid “rescue terminal” in init 5 mode, how stupid is that) and: sudo. Sudo is a plain disaster and forcing the crappy sudo approach on users is a no-go imho. (No, you cannot restore a complete (!) root environment in Ubuntu).
“We found Ubuntu’s default GNOME 2.14.2 desktop environment complete and easy to use.”
Aha… and why? Please explain it. You can’t? You don’t want to? If you won’t/can’t do it, then please do not publish anything at all.
The three pages are not worth reading. Really.
Edited 2006-07-19 22:47
Granted, the article may be pretty worthless, I didn’t actually read it. But I want to comment on your comments themselves.
Have you used Click N Run? It doesn’t have a whole log of software in there, it is user friendly, but somehow seemed flaky to me (this was in the freespire beta, so maybe it’s just a unstable version I tried.) All the distros you named, with the exception of Fedora Core, are not completely free distros either, like Ubuntu. Suse’s package manager was broken during the 10.1 release (from what I’ve read, when I first tried to download and install Suse, the installer was broken too!)
All Distributions have their share of bugs. I don’t know why you’d say Dapper has crippled language support, I think that it has some of the very best. I do agree with the slight incompatibility with Debian, though it is only slight. Most .debs will work without any problems.
I have never had issues with not being able to create a full root account, all it’s missing is the password, and then if you’d really like, you can take your user name out of the sudoers file.
Default Gnome is very usable, I hate the way other distributions (I’m looking at Mandrake and Suse here) screw with the menus on both KDE and Gnome. Why make it so that you have to go to Internet -> Web Browsers -> Firefox, when you can just go Internet -> Firefox.
The best of breed approach works much better than having a DVD ISO that installs everything by default, and if you want to go into individual package installation, it takes longer to do that then it does to remove the stuff you don’t want later. Especially since most new users won’t even know what half of the software does.
“The three pages are not worth reading. Really.”
Then don’t read the 3 pages, seriously.
“We found Ubuntu’s default GNOME 2.14.2 desktop environment complete and easy to use.
Aha… and why? Please explain it. You can’t? You don’t want to? If you won’t/can’t do it, then please do not publish anything at all. ”
If you don’t share their opinion then fine, but the reviewers liked how Gnome was setup in Ubuntu, it’s an opinion, it is not right or wrong. Just because you disagree with it does not make it wrong.
“Sudo is a plain disaster and forcing the crappy sudo approach on users is a no-go imho. (No, you cannot restore a complete (!) root environment in Ubuntu). ”
Then turn sudo off, I did, and now I can log in as root, or when I have an admin task when I am a normal user, I enter root’s password instead of my own. all you have to do is open a root terminal and use passwd to set roots password, and low and below, it works. Then after you do that, just:
Open System –> Administration –> Login Screen Setup
Click on the security tab
Check Allow root login
and voila, instant root environment. So there is a way, and it’s not too hard. Feel free to do some research before you post such nonsense
“If you don’t share their opinion then fine, but the reviewers liked how Gnome was setup in Ubuntu, it’s an opinion, it is not right or wrong. Just because you disagree with it does not make it wrong.”
Please tell me, where Ubuntus Gnome is better/different from Archs, Debians or any other systems Gnome? Gnome is Gnome. Period. And what they did is telling me that Ubuntus Gnome is superior without giving me ANY example what makes it superior to other distros Gnome. I have tested 6.06 and I am not impressed at all.
“and voila, instant root environment. So there is a way, and it’s not too hard. Feel free to do some research before you post such nonsense”
I guess you don’t know enough about the fine details in the underlying system in Ubuntu and Debian and don’t even know what I was referring to. It is not about enabling a root login but about the way root works in Ubuntu. Use a pure Debian system for a while and perform some administrative things as root there, then try to recreate that in Ubuntu. Chances are that you will get stuck somewhere.
No, I am not talking nonsense but I speak from experience. Ubuntu has the sudo solution built into the underlying system so much that you cannot get fully rid of it and this blocks some administrative possibilities for a normal root acount.
I disagree with you, and I don’t appreciate your condescending tone either
To enable the root account in Ubuntu, you just need to assign the root user a password. That will allow you access to login in to a terminal or a console login as root. then to enable root access to Xorg, you just tell your login manager to allow root logins.
I have used Ubuntu since warty, and I have used linux since Redhat 6.0. I may not be an expert, but I do know a root login when I use one. I didn’t have to create the root user, nor did I have to adjust anything other than it’s password. It allows me to edit config files, start and stop background services, do disk administration, install software through apt, and any other task I have tried, and I see no differences between it and say Fedora’s root user, or FreeBSDs.
Sudo is still in effect when you are logged in as a normal user, but it takes only the root password after changing roots password. when logged in as root, sudo never seems to run, and all tasks setup to be started by kdesudo or gksudo start with out a password prompt.
It seems to me to operate pretty similarly to any other distro when you do this, sudo has never blocked me from running any admin task. Perhaps you are talking about some obscure task that normal website/workstation/home user would not have to do, but I think you may need to RTFM
Do you really call this an article? I would call it “free advertising”. The “article” lacks any proof that Ubuntu is better than other distros. No real comparisions, no evaluation done by normal users and a general lack of technical knowledge by the reviewers.
You want proof and comparisons? I can only provide you with the little things, but if you sum things up, it makes a huge difference:
1) On the two Dell laptops I’ve installed Linux on, Ubuntu has been the only distro that automatically configures the dedicated sound volume buttons to work out of the box. OpenSuSE couldn’t, and neither could the latest beta of Freespire I downloaded a couple of days ago.
2) Similar to the point above: Ubuntu is the only distro that configured the touch pad to support scrolling out of the box.
3) This may be specific to Freespire, but since that’s the latest distro I have to compare Ubuntu with, it’s definitely a huge step backwards that I saw no out of the box support for hibernation and suspend to RAM. Ubuntu automatically presents me with these options when shutting down the computer.
4) Finally (and this is strictly my personal opinion), I’d choose Gnome >=2.14.x over KDE >=3.x any day. I admit I’m very curious about KDE 4, but until that happens, Gnome will simply be superior in terms of pure simplicity and sleek usability. There’s countless of small things annoying me in KDE, but that’s off topic so I won’t go there. But the point is, the fact that Ubuntu chose Gnome as their DE made me like it so much more. That Canonical is spending time and money improving Gnome even further doesn’t make things worse either.
Ubuntu has a level of quality approaching that of commercial OSes.
Edited 2006-07-20 08:46
But the point is, the fact that Ubuntu chose Gnome as their DE made me like it so much more. That Canonical is spending time and money improving Gnome even further doesn’t make things worse either.
I believe you are mistaken here. Ubuntu hasn’t chosen Gnome as their DE – they offer both DEs (Ubuntu and Kubuntu) and the latest word from Shuttleworth is that efforts should go into improving Kubuntu (which is already quite good).
I admit I’m very curious about KDE 4, but until that happens, Gnome will simply be superior in terms of pure simplicity and sleek usability.
That’s your personal preference, of course, and not a matter of fact (and you noted this). Myself, I prefer KDE and find it more usable, but both DEs are great and I think it’s a very good thing that Ubuntu comes in both flavors (and Xubuntu as well).
I believe you are mistaken here. Ubuntu hasn’t chosen Gnome as their DE – they offer both DEs (Ubuntu and Kubuntu)
I said Ubuntu, didn’t I? I’m not talking about Kubuntu.
I admit I’m very curious about KDE 4, but until that happens, Gnome will simply be superior in terms of pure simplicity and sleek usability.
That’s your personal preference, of course, and not a matter of fact (and you noted this). Myself, I prefer KDE and find it more usable, but both DEs are great and I think it’s a very good thing that Ubuntu comes in both flavors (and Xubuntu as well).
Yes, that’s my personal opinion. But I agree 100% that offering different flavors is a good thing.
The thing I was trying to prove in my previous post wasn’t that I prefer Gnome over KDE. The original author of the “Oh… my… God….” post asked for proof where Ubuntu is better than the rest, and I provided him with some measurable facts like the extra keyboard buttons working out of the box. Maybe I should just have skipped the last point, as it was purely my personal opinon.
I said Ubuntu, didn’t I? I’m not talking about Kubuntu.
Well…they are pretty much the same. But I understand what you mean.
Maybe I should just have skipped the last point, as it was purely my personal opinon.
Nah, it’s my bad, I hadn’t read the whole thread when I commented. I was afraid of witnessing the birth of yet another Gnome vs. KDE flameware and wanted to nip it in the bud…
Gnome will simply be superior in terms of pure simplicity and sleek usability.
Having used Ubuntu and Gnome for several weeks, I’m afraid it’s quality compared to other distros, and KDE based ones, is greatly exaggerated. The wireless GUI doesn’t even have options for WPA, which makes it pretty useless on the widespread G networks these days – that’s an Ubuntu issue there though, and is the merest tip of an iceberg.
I find more than ever that the ‘simplicity and usability’ argument is used as an excuse for not putting things into Gnome that end up being required, either by ordinary users or system administrators. Withdrawing options from the print dialogue is one, and it has an awful and extremely inconsistent habit of trying to make many dialogues ‘simple‘.
For example, Gnome’s system preferences are put together as a series of small dialogues rather than as part of a coherent and functioning whole. Each dialogue has a ‘Close’ button on it. OK, I’ve changed some settings but I just want to cancel and exit, leaving everything as before. Does the close button do this? Nope. It saves everything. Does using the close icon in the top right cancel and exit? Nope. Stumped.
Worse, some dialogues like the desktop background one simply have a ‘Finish’ button with a green tick that looks like it was pulled off a fifteen year old VB application. Some dialogues like SCIM have an OK/Quit button combo to come out, as does the date/time one. The theme dialogue together with the menu and toolbar dialogue also offer no preview whatsoever of what your desktop and apps will look like, as Windows and certainly KDE do. Good God, it really makes me appreciative of the functionality of KDE’s Control Centre. All it needs is some better organisation – and that’s probably the easy bit!
The ‘Assistive Technologies’ dialogue, again has the close button problem, but it then has a button for ‘Close and Logout’. Well, why would I want to close and logout? Yes, I know that it says that I need to logout for it to take effect in a text label above, but who reads a text label unless you need to? A better way would have been for me to confirm and exit through an ‘OK’ button, and then for a dialogue to inform me that I needed to log out and log back in for these changes to take effect. I would then actually be able to read about what I need to do and then click Yes or No accordingly as to whether I wanted to log out right now or not.
Seriously. I am absolutely flabbergasted that no ‘usability expert‘ (and I use that term in its broadest possible sense after the past few weeks) has picked up on this.
I mean, seriously. Is it just not possible to develop a half-decent user interface in this desktop environment? Every single graphical window within Gnome consists of a handful of UI elements, providing you with very limited functionality when compared with other desktop environments. I mean, you can knock those interfaces up in absolutely no time in Visual Basic or Qt Designer.
And these are just the obvious things off the top of my head. Dragging a window around in Gnome is excruciating and you seem to lose both side portions of a window and your desktop icons underneath when you do it. Open the system monitor and try scrolling through the list box of processes and watch thing fall over itself when it tries to keep up. The system monitor also helpfully tells me that the system monitor itself takes up at least 10% CPU time without it doing anything. Funny. I don’t recall Windows’ Task Manager or KDE’s System Guard doing that.
Having used Ubuntu and Gnome for several weeks as a desktop, I never cease to be amazed by how utterly limited it is, and I struggle to believe that this is the enterprise and corporate desktop people shout from the rooftops about.
Ubuntu has a level of quality approaching that of commercial OSes.
From what I’ve seen, I find that highly debatable at best.
Edited 2006-07-20 20:43
“For example, Gnome’s system preferences are put together as a series of small dialogues rather than as part of a coherent and functioning whole.”
Ubuntu has a level of quality approaching that of commercial OSes.
“From what I’ve seen, I find that highly debatable at best.”
Your initial arguments dont support your conclusion. Its biggest competitor, Windows control panel, is also a series of small dialogues – often times bearing no similarites whatsoever.
That’s not to defend GNOME particularly, the control area could be better, but in comparison to the popular OS you can’t honestly say they are behind in terms of design.
Ouch! Seriously, Debian got it right with its combination of apt and its volunteer package maintainer army.
What Ubuntu adds is caring about being a desktop, and caring about reaching out to a broader community.
What do you mean when you say that Ubuntu has too few package installation options, anyway?
@arctic: Just so you know you can use Debian repos with Ubuntu, they just aren’t supported and MAY break your system if used incorrectly.
@ctglahn: you have to run your editor as root to edit system files (type “sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf”)
I think dapper is quite impressive. It brings linux to the massess. It is not bloated like Fedora/Suse. It is simple and easy to use for beginners, but has some really nice features for advanced users and it is well supported. I can definately understand why it is coonsidered, by some, to be the #1 distro available.
I like it, but if you don’t then don’t use it.
“Just so you know you can use Debian repos with Ubuntu, they just aren’t supported and MAY break your system if used incorrectly.”
For your information: Many many many Debian packages actually break Ubuntu, no matter what you try because Ubuntu is not 100% compatible with Debian since the 5.10 release. They changed a lot of Debians base-configuration/coding and the result is Ubuntu being a Debian fork. Furthermore, Ubuntu bugpatches cannot be backported to Debian either, as they will break your Debian system once you apply them. And Debians developers are quite upset because of this.
“you have to run your editor as root to edit system files (type “sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf”)”
You probably mean “you have to run … as superuser”, not as root, right? Ubuntu does not have root privileges by default and – as stated earlier – cannot have a 100% classical root account set up anymore.
Are you saying ‘sudo passwd root’ doesn’t work anymore? Seems to work here, FYI (Dapper).
Works here as well.
superuser == UID 0 == root
When you run an app using sudo, you are running it as UID 0. Well, UID 0 on every Linux system out there is root.
Just because you can’t login as root directly or use su, does not mean you aren’t running processes as root or that the root account doesn’t exist.
You really should read a little more before you troll posts. Debian packages CAN be used with ubuntu, they are not supported and YES they can break your system, no one was ever arguing otherwise.
sudo == root as mentioned before… so saying that root doesn’t exist anymore is pointless.
We all understand that you prefer Debian and don’t like anything about ubuntu. So why they hell are you posting here? Your opinion is just that, YOURS. It doesn’t change the fact that one of the most widely adopted distributions is currently Ubuntu, of which this post was highlighing.
“We all understand that you prefer Debian and don’t like anything about ubuntu. So why they hell are you posting here?”
Well, I prefer Fedora to Debian, to be honest.
I don’t hate Ubuntu, I simply don’t like some things that they did to Ubuntu since its first release (4.10). IMHO they went the wrong path when 5.04 came out. And what I dislike is reading an article that I expect to give me some information WHY Ubuntu is the desktop champ and the only thing I read is a fanboy shouting out that his OS is the best without giving me real arguments for why this is so. It is a bit like: “My car is the best of them all, but I won’t tell you why this is so, as you aren’t really interested in it.”
If I write an article, I have to give well funded arguments for why something I write might be true. If I can’t or don’t care to do that, then it is nothing more than advertising/poor marketing.
It is not bloated like Fedora/Suse.
Just try to make logical volumes on raid0 partitions with the text-install partioner and change the stride.
Call it bloated whatever,but the partioners in both SuSE and Fedora are more mature and productive.
Forgive my ignorance, but what does partitioning software and partition managers have to do with bloat of an Operating System?
Perhaps you were replying to someone else, because that has no bearing whatsoever on what I said.
“Do you really call this an article?”
It’s an article, how do you want to call it?
“I would call it “free advertising”.
I would be concerned if the advertiser was Microsoft.
“The “article” lacks any proof that Ubuntu is better than other distros. No real comparisions, no evaluation done by normal users and a general lack of technical knowledge by the reviewers.”
Well, it’s the preferred/most touted distro according to Distrowatch. So…
“There is a reason why I will never consider Ubuntu the best distro for the desktop: Too many bugs, no package-installation options, bad swap setup with the default partitioner, crippled language support, incompatibility with Debian, inability (!) to launch a safe init 3 session for recovery tasks (there is only the stupid “rescue terminal” in init 5 mode, how stupid is that) and: sudo. Sudo is a plain disaster and forcing the crappy sudo approach on users is a no-go imho. (No, you cannot restore a complete (!) root environment in Ubuntu).”
– Too many bugs: true
– No package installation options: true, but its intent is to be installed by Joe No-previous-linux-experience
– Bad swap…: how come? I have 512MB of memory and got 1GB of swap. How that’s so bad?
– Incompatibility with Debian: it doesn’t have to be compatible. It’s not compatible with Windows, remember.
– Inability to launch…: I hear Joe saying “what the hell is init 3?”
– Sudo: do you prefer root access? Sudo does the best job isolating the user from possible harm to the installation. But you have to be in sudoers file to have access. What happens if Joe adds grandma user and then she want’s to change the clock or some other settings?
By the way, I don’t know what you mean with ‘you cannot restore a complete root environment’. Most people shouldn’t know what root is. But you can issue sudo -s to have a root shell, if that is what you want. Or add a password to root to login as root, if that’s what you prefer. But you are not going to administer a home PC as root from the shell just because.
Probably you should install LFS. I’m sure it will suit you.
“Ubuntu does not have root privileges by default and – as stated earlier – cannot have a 100% classical root account set up anymore.”
Wrong, as I stated in a previous comment. Do some research, troll.
Sorry, if you don’t know the difference between sudo and root, then there is nothing I can do for you. Especially if you call me a troll unnecessarily. Keep things civilized or don’t post at all.
Golly. So, given that the first thing I do when I setup a new machine here is delete the first user (we run LDAP/Kerberos/NFS);
sudo passwd
<enter new password twice>
logout
login as root
deluser tempuser
If this didn’t work, I wouldn’t be able to log in as root when machines are disconnected from the network, since all of sudo’s information is retrieved from LDAP… Wait, gosh darn it, I can!
Now – if you were correct, this would be impossible right? Now, perhaps if you’d said something about sudo being the default mode of gksu, you might have a leg to stand on – but you didn’t. Thus, it’s obvious you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.
As it turns out, there’s a boolean option in gconf ( /apps/gksu/sudo-mode ) that lets you switch the default behaviour of gksu between root and sudo mode. Handy.
Once, I ran Ubuntu. It was such a nice distro, it was fast, clean, no malarky from this OS. But then they had to be cute and mess with their networking, and now my wifi doesn’t work anylonger. I’m not the only one saying this, Dapper may be nice, but until they fix their wifi, its on ice.
Do you have NetworkManager installed? Has worked flawlessly on the laptops I’ve tried it on.
If you are running a broadcom chipset and were using ndiswrapper, you simply have to blacklist the bcm43xx module in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklists
The presence of the native driver will foil your ndiswrapper attempts. It’s good that they are pushing for native drivers, but most people still seem to like the ndiswrapper method with that chipset.
See this thread on the Ubuntu forums for more info, and a nice script that does everything necessary including setting up ndiswrapper.
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=197102&highlight=bcm43…
I been trying several distros since 2002, and Ubuntu is the one that worked better in my desktop and laptop. Better meaning very good HW support and I guess that’s one of the most important things to get more Linux desktop penetration for regular users.
I have using Ubuntu since last release and I moved for Dapper last month. For this period of about 6 months of usage I’d say that Ubuntu is very stable, easy to install new packages and very clean (with 1 CD only you can start to work).
One thing that I need to move definately to GNU/Linux is a good video editor equivalent to Adobe Premier or Pinnacle Studio to work with my home videos, only this.
Cinelerra is the most advanced video editing tool for Linux.
http://www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
http://cinelerra.org/
“We’d like to see Ubuntu begin shipping Red Hat’s display configuration tool—not only would Red Hat’s tool fit in well with the rest of Ubuntu’s configuration utilities, but it is open source and available for the taking.”
I like this thinking.
GUI tools (i.e. “control panels”) for desktop configuration, dpkg-reconfigure for configuring servers (that is, server daemon programs).
Cinelerra is the most advanced video editing tool for Linux.
Main Actor is also pretty good, and I actually like its interface better. I also found it less buggy, but then again it’s been awhile since I’ve tried Cinelerra.
Also, Main Actor is not F/OSS, and it’s a bit expensive.
The text installer isn’t the prefered way to install Ubuntu 6.06 dapper drake. Compare apples with apples please, suse and fedora only have a blingbling installer, the Live-cd has QT-parted so if you want that use the live-cd.
I myself on the other hand prefered the text-installer, the partitioning wasn’t that hard and you get to set-up your max screen-resolution, which you don’t with the live-cd (should really be fixed).
Dapper drake hasn’t become what they promised but it still is a good distro, you need a script to install some stuff though, (or you can do it manually which takes quite some time). With Edgy Eft they’re going to improve it but I don’t think that this problem will soon be solved.
On the other hand I kinda like the fact that thye install the bare minimum (in Kubuntu at least), so you don’t get to remove two of your three videoplayers, four of the five office suits… Some people prefer clean installs where you just add the programs you want to have, or with one program for the task (one video player, one audioplayer one office suits one…)
Unless they changed it with version 5, you can install Fedora in text mode.
You can also install Suse in text mode. Even Mandriva has a text based installer if you wish to use it.
On the other hand I kinda like the fact that thye install the bare minimum (in Kubuntu at least), so you don’t get to remove two of your three videoplayers, four of the five office suits… Some people prefer clean installs where you just add the programs you want to have, or with one program for the task (one video player, one audioplayer one office suits one…)
Most distros allow you to pick and choose what you want to install, so if someone wants to install multiple packages that do the same thing, then its up to them. With Ubuntu, you don’t have the choice about whats gets installed although its quite easy to remove what you don’t need.
Edited 2006-07-20 11:38
With Ubuntu, you don’t have the choice about whats gets installed although its quite easy to remove what you don’t need.
Yes, you do. Just perform a minimal install and select your favorite packages with APT.
I was unimpressed with Dapper, after using Ubuntu since Warty, I have switched to SLED because most things just work, like XGL was a button press away, and it detected more hardware than any other distro before it. If Ubuntu wants to stay a main player in Desktop Linux they will need to do a lot more, you shouldn’t need to jump through hoops.
Are you just stupid? I know the difference between sudo and root. I just gave you the method to “turn on” root access again, *without* using sudo *again*. Idiot. Learn to read and experiment.
Lack of arguments = time for personal attacks? Why this offensive tone? I didn’t call you a stupid or an idiot.
I really like Ubuntu. Except for one thing: it never detects my serial mouse, so I have to Ctrl+Alt+F1 to go to a terminal and then edit xorg.conf with nano. Not very comfortable if you ask me…
I used to hate the brown theme also, but it improved a lot in this last release…
Holy crap I’ve been transported back to 1994!
You seriously still use a serial mouse? May I ask if there is a specific reason why? Just wondering.
It’s been working flawlessly for years. I simply don’t need a new mouse
Edit: BTW, I still use a 12+ years old AT keyboard, but with a PS2 adaptor since the new mobo’s don’t have AT ports anymore. Best keyboard ever!
Edited 2006-07-20 14:37
“It’s been working flawlessly for years. I simply don’t need a new mouse
”
A brand new optical USB Logitech/Microsoft mouse with three buttons and a scroll wheel can be had for under $10.00. You might not need a new mouse, but the feel and precision of the newer mouse make it worth the small upgrade cost.
I use one too with an usb to serial adapter.Allways (almost) detected.
Edited 2006-07-20 15:42
Arguments? Re-read the entire posts and you will find them. Or you want I start explaining you again? ok:
sudo -s
passwd root
<enter root password twice>
exit
<login as root from console>
root@brainless:~#
There you have your arguments. Process them and stop talking about what you don’t understand.
I had and still have high hopes, but the control panels are simply too simple. Many common configuration options are just not possible without diving into text files somewhere. I still have not found them all.
Mandriva seems to have a better balance between ease-of-use and configurability. Perhaps the next version of Ubuntu…?
“Ubuntu has the sudo solution built into the underlying system so much that you cannot get fully rid of it and this blocks some administrative possibilities for a normal root acount.”
I have a full root account in my Ubuntu just activating the root account by setting a password. I can perform *any* administrative things. I can destroy all my data with rm -rf / , or delete my partitions with fdisk or use nmap -O or install packages with apt-get or change kernel parameters in /proc. So tell how is that I don’t have full root access while logged in as root (without sudo, just login as root user)…
sudo su or sudo passwd or sudo <command>
nice..I was almost ready to replace the OSX with a linux, but there are so many distros..very hard to decide!
The bad thing is that the PocketPC sync (i use the MarkSpace Missing Sync now) will be a little tricky, but I think the mac-on-linux work …
Now its time to put a TEST HD on the mac…
Edited 2006-07-20 17:01
I don’t understand what you mean…
http://doc.gwos.org
My doc writers do a fair job.
Article title “Ubuntu 6.06 Is Current Desktop Linux Champ” may well be based on simple fact that Canonical distro is #1 on Distrowatch ( http://distrowatch.com ) list but to claim Ubuntu The best Linux distribution Jason Brooks has to do much more.
Everything in article is based on personal experience and impression but real benchmarks and comparisons are missing although author promissed
more writings about easy-Linux championship.
It would be long list of reasons if I had to make one to answer to question why I never managed to keep Ubuntu installations on my computers for more than two weeks. As far as I can tell Ubuntu IS NOT the easiest nor most complete Linux distribution. Just take a look at PCLinuxOS which is real champion on my Pentium II 450 MHz and Celeron 500 MHz Compaq Deskpro Small Form Factor computers ( frequently seen in corporate offices)
PCLinuxOS is only at its O.93 version number but still in “top ten” Linux distros list at Distrowatch It can beat Ubuntu in almost every aspect if we are talking about distribution aimed to desktop users.
There are other KDE based easy-to use distros too
(Vector,Ark,Zenwalk to name few) that might compete with Ubuntu for prestigeous “Analist Choice” mark.
But we still have to wait for Jason Brooks and eWEEK to provide more proof for what they claimed.
I know who is eWEEK’s target audience and it’s most likely Ark, PSLinuxOS and Vector will be skipped in favour of distros clearly aimed to corporate environments ( SuSE, Xandros, RedHat, CentOS…).
Also I don’t think eWEEK editorial staff will alocate more space in their magazine’s pages for “what’s the best Linux distro” kind of articles.
However it is good to see more articles about desktop Linux(es) in such reputable magazine as eWEEk is.