Submitted by “While still far from perfect, Ubuntu 6.10 ‘Edgy Eft’ is both an improvement over the so-called ‘long-term support’ release and a decent operating system in its own right. It’s in a much better place than any other free-of-charge operating system has been before now, but I don’t think it’ll give any commercial operating systems a run for their money.”
Though it could easily be fixed by changing the default “safe video mode” X.org driver from ati to vesa, as of this writing the fix still has not been implemented. This is not only sloppy development, but sloppy release testing as well, and it’s these things that separate the commercial operating systems from the free-of-charge.
Although not an excuse but Ubuntu is usually one of the fastest implementers of security fixes.
> Ubuntu is usually one of the fastest implementers of
> security fixes.
Ahem.. I’ve only ever reported one security bug (memory limiting with ulimit/pam limits doesn’t work) and after 3 weeks it still has the status “Unconfirmed”. I don’t know how fast other implementers are, but IMHO 3 weeks is not very fast for something that enables your users to freeze your OS.
Ahem.. I’ve only ever reported one security bug (memory limiting with ulimit/pam limits doesn’t work) and after 3 weeks it still has the status “Unconfirmed”. I don’t know how fast other implementers are, but IMHO 3 weeks is not very fast for something that enables your users to freeze your OS
If I were you, I would be more low profile about it, because you say strange things.
Not having memory ulimit working won’t freeze your OS at all, so it’s a bug, but nothing critical like you imply.
I don’t use it, and it never froze anything.
> Not having memory ulimit working won’t freeze your OS
> at all, so it’s a bug, but nothing critical like you imply.
Well, if you use virtual memory then it’s very easy to get a system more or less completely frozen by just allocating memory until the VMM is so busy that everything else grinds to a halt. At least in my experience.
Well, if you use virtual memory then it’s very easy to get a system more or less completely frozen by just allocating memory until the VMM is so busy that everything else grinds to a halt. At least in my experience
I have to correct you there. You use virtual memory all the time. Surely you meant “swap” or “pagination”, and not virtual memory, which is a mechanism you use even if you have no swap, at least in Linux (heck, even the Amiga used it).
Then, even if you don’t use swap, it’s very easy to get a system more or less completely frozen by just allocating memory until the VMM (virtual memory manager, which, as I said, is also used for RAM) is so busy that everything grinds to a halt. It’s actually worse, as you can’t get out of it, contrary to when you have swap.
The problem is still in the app that takes all the memory.
Now, ulimit helps of course, and ulimit having a bug is a problem, but not a critical one.
And in environments where you need these things badly (i.e. which must be very stable or secure), you sure enough don’t leave Dapper to install Edgy.
> > Well, if you use virtual memory then it’s very easy
> > to get a system more or less completely frozen by just
> > allocating memory until the VMM is so busy that everything
> > else grinds to a halt. At least in my experience
>
> I have to correct you there. You use virtual memory
> all the time. Surely you meant “swap” or “pagination”,
> and not virtual memory, which is a mechanism you use
> even if you have no swap, at least in Linux
Ah, OK, I’m not that familiar with the kernel. Nevertheless, if I can’t limit the amount of resident memory a user can use my system isn’t going to be very stable. Even if the server isn’t critical I still shouldn’t have to do a hard-reset ever.
> The problem is still in the app that takes all the memory.
The app is not to blame, and neither is the user. It might just be someone loading a movie’s audio into GnuSound which tries to put it all into RAM until everything freezes. It’s not buggy or anything, that’s just how it works, and the user probably doesn’t know this (well, I guess that after the first hard-reset most users will have learned this, except me who had to do it twice before learning ;-)).
On a final note, I think there is a serious flaw in Canonical Ltd.’s business model. Any company that provides a free product and intends to make money primarily from support services for that product is not financially motivated to offer something that works well.
The motivation is that nobody wants to support a piece of crap. The entire review bounced back and forth between sane arguments and utter nonsense like this. The author also seems to think that Xandros and Mandriva are far and away less buggy and more stable systems than Ubuntu. I’m afraid he’s gonna find himself alone (or very nearly alone) on that island.
“…but I don’t think it’ll give any commercial operating systems a run for their money.”
I don’t know, I have already replaced commercial OS’s on three of my machines with it.
There are a few things that always bring me back to Windows, and unfortunately those things are out of Cononical’s hands. They include, hardware driver support (mostly that means ATI) and a lack of other commercial software support.
Many of my family that want cheap PCs (I can build them pretty cheap – cheaper than Windows) are internet users, and while I’d love to get them set up with Ubuntu they simply arent going to be able to do the things that they (and their kids) want to do online, like watching most videos, or playing the shockwave or virtools based games, or really even playing most Flash games (it’s too hard to install the version 9 beta for most people – there’s no click to install button, no sudo nautilus in the menu, and for these users the command line is out).
Then there are the hardcore gamers. I myself would love to switch off of Windows, and stop paying the Microsoft tax, but the truth is, gaming under Linux is too much like work, and not enough like gaming.
Not to mention productivity tools like Flex Builder 2 etc. (I should mention that it is possible, with the help of a Windows Machine, to get Dreamweaver and Flash 8 running under wine, and they run pretty nicely).
I’d love to see a gamer’s Linux distro that comes out of the box, set up for gamers, and all that that means – wine preisntalled/configured, drivers – maybe a new project to use D3D 10 binary drivers and implement a whole directx subsystem/patchset for the Linux kernel (I know, I’m dreaming, but hey).
If you are happy with windows, stick with it.
But hoping to turn Linux into something that it is not so that it will run your games is pretty silly. Linux is on to gain market share in corporate, government and educational environments where you create a policy that says all hardware purchases must be supported by the stable kernel provided by distribution “X” at the time of purchase.
Eventually Linux’s significant market share in corporate and government settings will lead to higher adoption in the home market, but gamers are by far the last stretch of a long road.
Nonetheless, if you can’t wait, Cedega may have your gaming fix if you are willing to part with some money.
For the rest of us, Linux provides a very strong, secure and cheap desktop with the productivity tools we need to get our jobs done. (Openoffice, Kdissert, Tellico, Kontact, Basket, Kpdf, Kdeedu, etc)
this guys claims that Ubuntu is “far from perfect” simply because he couldn’t install ATI drivers? And because the new artwork wasn’t very “new” in the first place? Great review, meh.
FTA: “Among free-of-charge GNU/Linux distributions, Ubuntu is probably the best as of this writing, but if you want a hassle-free desktop that doesn’t require commercial support to get it running properly, you’re going to have to pay for one of the more finely-tuned distros.”
Commercial support to get it running properly? Is that a joke? So having dozens of BBS, community sites and howtos for each language Ubuntu supports doesn’t count?
So I guess that you also think that you can’t get OpenSUSE “running properly” just because you’re not paying for it. And Gentoo, and Debian, and Slackware.
Anyway, my Ubuntu installations from 5.10 to 6.10 all worked flawlessly right after installing.
Damn, some people should get a clue before writing.
The only problem is that none of the video modes will work with my monitor. All “out of range”.
This is not a cheap monitor either, it is a Viewsonic VP2130b 21″ flat panel.
I guess what I really need is a text based installer instead of a gui one.(bait.)
A few notes:
To install Ubuntu you need yo boot the system in the LiveCD mode (same disc), this should autodetect your hardware sn set it up correctly. If not, you can check this link: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FrameBuffer [ubuntu.com]
Also, if you download the ‘alternative’ cd there is a text mode installer, I prefer it.
Ubuntu was originally based on Debian, but since its first release in September 2004, Ubuntu has grown further and further away from Debian, though there is still a great deal of resemblance between the two on a basic level.
This is incorrect. Every new Ubuntu release is built on a snapshot of Debian’s development branch (Debian “unstable”). Still, Ubuntu doesn’t exactly advertise this fact on their web page that describes the Debian-Ubuntu relationship:
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/relationship
This is not really a snapshot, but a merge between new package from unstable and packages from the previous version of ubuntu.
The development cycle for each new Ubuntu release starts by taking a snapshot of Debian “unstable”. Here’s how Ubuntu developer Scott James Remnant describes this process:
“every six months we take a snapshot of Debian’s unstable distribution, apply any outstanding patches from our last release to it and spend a couple of months testing and bug-fixing it.”
http://www.free-it.de/archiv/talks_2005/paper-11194/paper-11194.htm…
Seriously. Just start the package manager or use apt-get and the sources point right to Debian servers.
This is certainly not true. It points to the repositories of Canonical – and it is not advisable at all to mix Ubuntu and Debian repositories.
Edgy seems to be a bit over-the-edge for a lot of users. Lot of hardware problems it seems.
it’s still nowhere near the quality of a commercial desktop operating system like Xandros or Mandriva.
…
but if you want a hassle-free desktop that doesn’t require commercial support to get it running properly, you’re going to have to pay for one of the more finely-tuned distros.
What???? Well shite – all free distros pack it up and go home. The perfect linux(s) are Xandros and Mandrake.
I love how he backs those statements up with accurate examples for each point. Telling us exactly what isn’t so finely tuned and what is so lacking in quality?
I would bet he uses the “you get what you pay for” mantra to describe everything.
Have they corrected the ISO image yet so it will boot off all hardware? Have not installed 6.10 as my DVD will not boot on the system I want to install it on. It strangely will not boot on 2 other systems, but does boot on another, so I know the DVD is a good copy.
I had a similar problem, then I discovered that I had used DVD media to create the LiveCD. Two of my older machines don’t support DVDF. Oops. Making a new CD with CD-R/W media cured the problem.
“I had a similar problem, then I discovered that I had used DVD media to create the LiveCD. Two of my older machines don’t support DVDF. Oops. Making a new CD with CD-R/W media cured the problem.”
Ahh okay, thanks. I will download the CD images and give that a go.
It gave Windows & Mac OS a run for its money for me, personally, and won the race.
I’ve been testing/using/cursing Linux since 1998 (Redhat 5.1) and Ubuntu is the first real solid distro that I would recommend to both newbies and power users.
A review which is actually critical based on real issues and not some biased heresay and opinion.
Great article. Just the facts, no fluff about what works.
I was very happy with Dapper Drake on my x86-64. The thing was rock solid, no issues. I installed Edgy (from wiped the existing install), and have had nothing but trouble ever since. X server won’t start half the time. Firefox (of all programs) crashes all the time. I’m not happy with it at all. Maybe I’ll try a re-install….
I was very happy with Dapper Drake on my x86-64. The thing was rock solid, no issues. I installed Edgy (from wiped the existing install), and have had nothing but trouble ever since. X server won’t start half the time. Firefox (of all programs) crashes all the time. I’m not happy with it at all. Maybe I’ll try a re-install….
Edgy was clearly labeled experimental release. The stable one is Dapper.
Anyway, do you use hibernate in Edgy ?
I’ve realised that when using hibernate, it destroys sth in the swap, which makes Ubuntu unable to recognise the partition as swap, so you run without any swap.
Which makes the OS unusable as soon as you hit all the memory available.
I have to make a mkswap and revert back to /dev/hdxx in /etc/fstab, instead of recognition by UUID.
I would like to see ubuntu on PS3, that would truly get me to buy one of those nifty machines.
I am having a hell of a time getting my Echo Gina 3G working.
It has to do with firmware loading and I think I will have to compile the ALSA drivers/firmware by hand and then dump them in the appropriate folders. The stock driver does install but it throws it onto the wrong hardware/function.
Any pointers with Edgy 64 where I should dump the built firmware and corresponding ALSA driver module (I assume under the linux/modules folder).
Aside from that I have X working well with my 7600GT with TV out through component. If I could get sound going then I would use Ubuntu for Vid/DVD playback cause the image quality is was better than under XP.
I would also love to try using WINE for Reaper and some of my VSTi’s for audio production. Then I know I could stay in Ubuntu all day long. I hear Reaper works but not sure about my VSTi’s
The only problems I ever had with Debian (Sarge) was with configuring the video and sound card. Default settings would get me to a desktop with a lower resolution than I would have preferred, and recognizing the soundblaster eluded me for some reason. That whole making the desktop bigger than the screen thing also irritated the hell out of me. It always struck me funny that Knoppix would auto recognize everything flawlessly, but with Debian I would get headaches. Gentoo is just “pain” personified.
To me, Ubuntu is scary-solid for an all-in-one OS. To contradict the author, I’d have to say it’s Ubuntu that’s going to give commercial Linux’s a run for their money. At least it will force them to release better products. I gave up on Mandrake 10.0.
Now if they can get Wine to run modern video games, I’d be a happy camper.
Face it, there is nothing easy about CUPS. On other distros, I was never able to get anywhere with printer set-up. Ubuntu’s Eft, however, made the setting up of my USB Epson C80 very easy. So, that’s something. I have no trouble with my ATI 9600XT. Sound was set up automatically at installation. Some progress is needed in the area of wireless.
http://www.cminusgames.com
Face it, i have never had an easier time setting up printers on any operating system since the switch to CUPS many years ago. I especially love the automagic network sharing, very useful at work. Of course, if your printer is unsupported, no system will be easy, and i guess the distros could mess it up somehow, but for me it has always just been a matter of picking my printer from a list and it worked. It also helped that KDE had/has nice CUPS integration. Even getting CUPS working from source code was easy. In contrast i still get ticks thinking about LPR.
You are entirely correct about ATI and wifi.
K/Ubuntu 6.10 is still buggy. There is one problem with the K desktop settings where the x file is overwritten when you set the sleep time via the administrator mode. This screwed up x.org server files in both 6.06LTS and 6.10.
While Ubuntu and Canonical continue to produce pretty good stuff, I think Slackware 11.0 is the best distro going. Slackware just keeps getting better with no muss, no fuss and a rock solid environment to build in.
And you can turn Slack into anything you want it to be.
Long live Slackware!
Thanks, Pat!!
What an utterly useless review. To say “[Ubuntu] is definitely not ready for production machines”, without stating what the purpose of this *production* machine is, is vague and meaningless.
Ubuntu unfit to be a webserver? Unlikely.
Ubuntu unfit to be a desktop computer used by people who just need to surf the net and send emails? Unlikely.
Ubuntu unfit to be an office machine for creating office documents? Unlikely.
Just because linux doesn’t support every damned machine and proprietry card in the world doesn’t make it unfit. You know what, Mac OSX doesn’t either. It works on a very limited hardware setup. How about buying a machine to work with linux? It’s not hard.
The Ubuntu configuration system is inconsistent at least. I don’t see the benefits for having two separated Configuration menus.
As a long-time Windows and Mac OS X power-user I tried Ubuntu 6.10 on my PC Workstation in the last two weeks. And although I did everything EXACTLY the way the official Ubuntu Help, my WLAN PCI Card didn’t work. I also tried to mount the NTFS Windows-Volumes on the same machine, but unfotunately the Drive configuration panel described in the Ubuntu Help simply wasn’t there.
After this two frustrations I wiped Ubuntu off my harddisk – now I will try OpenSUSE.
The Ubuntu configuration system is inconsistent at least. I don’t see the benefits for having two separated Configuration menus
OK : you don’t see the benefits so it’s inconsistent. You’re already categorized as the Windows power-user that thinks he’s a guru of computing.
As a long-time Windows and Mac OS X power-user I tried Ubuntu 6.10 on my PC Workstation in the last two weeks. And although I did everything EXACTLY the way the official Ubuntu Help, my WLAN PCI Card didn’t work
So, a guru of computing would alert Ubuntu on this, and look at forums for help. But I feel that’s not what you did : gurus like you don’t ask for help and can’t communicate with others.
I also tried to mount the NTFS Windows-Volumes on the same machine, but unfotunately the Drive configuration panel described in the Ubuntu Help simply wasn’t there
Idem as above.
After this two frustrations I wiped Ubuntu off my harddisk – now I will try OpenSUSE
You’re a master, really, I mean it ! BTW, avoid things like Edgy in the future, try stable (Dapper) instead.
> The Ubuntu configuration system is inconsistent at least.
> I don’t see the benefits for having two separated Configuration
> menus.
Huh? If you’re referring to System->Administration and System->Preferences then you’re dead wrong on it being “inconsistent”. One is for administering the system (i.e. stuff that affects all users and which require administrator privileges) and the other for your own personal preferences (i.e. stuff that affects only you and which don’t require any special privileges). IMO it’s very logical and I would NOT want to have the two menus combined.
….”I’ve been testing/using/cursing Linux since 1998 (Redhat 5.1) and Ubuntu is the first real solid distro that I would recommend to both newbies and power users.”…….
My scenario almost to the date, also. This is the first version I actually use 99.9% of the time, after beta testing Vista for awhile and finding it was very irritating for many reasons, one of which is the going price, another, the hardware requirements.
Edgy works perfectly (well, as much as possible) on my e6400 Core 2 Duo Intel based box, and is actually faster than XP in many areas, as in, booting, opening apps, running apps, exiting… hmmm pretty much in ALL areas.
(compiled the updated 2.6.18.2 kernel in just under 15 minutes)
I have found that Dreamweaver only works about 80%, actually, under WINE, crashing to the desktop for no apparent reason. And trying to insert Flash with DW causes another crash to desktop. So much so, that I prefer booting to Windows to work in Dreamweaver. Am trying Nvu, but it does have its limitations.
However, my graphics needs are met by both Fireworks 8, and Photoshop 7 under WINE, and they seem to work about 99%, with only a few idiosyncrasies.
I also have Beryl running flawlessly with a mere 6800XT nVid card.
And native UT 2004 works great, as does Quake3 (albeit, I have to run Quake under WINE to get sound).
Now, if only the EAGames Battlefield series would work under Linux..
All that said… I still can’t quite recommend any Linux distro as a straight across replacement for Windows to my non-geek clients. I’m really thinking that Vista (aka: ME-2) will piss a few people off with its hardware requirements, the cost of the O/S itself, and the new apps people will need to run 100% under Vista.
And that Ubuntu, in a couple of years (when XP begins to be phased out) will be MUCH more intuitive and user friendly with a lot more support for everyday issues (as in drivers).
I guess I’m hoping that Ubuntu will be the escape path for us old Windows addicts, and that I’ll be way ahead of the tech support game by then in both MS and linux. Always a need for local hands-on techies anywhere and everywhere.
> I prefer booting to Windows to work in Dreamweaver
Why not use the “free-beer” vmware player?
The first impression of an operating system is the installer… and in my case it wasn’t pretty.
No, this had nothing to do with device drivers. Just not enough testing.
First, if you insert the CD while running Windows, a program pops up, with a title “Ubuntu 6.06”. Excuse me? Didn’t I download 6.10?
When you boot from the CD, you get a nice splash screen… and no feedback about what’s happening. In my case, the hard drive or the CD was really slow so it took about 10 min. to boot. And the whole time, I couldn’t tell if it was still doing something or not.
Finally, screen turned completely black, with a cursor blinking in the corner. Reminds me of the good old days of DOS. A while later, an error message appeared, saying the random number generator couldn’t be initialized. Uh… that’s great to know.
Finally, GNOME session started… and greeted me with an error message – the UI theme could not be loaded, for whatever reason. Well, whatever – I’ll survive with the default one.
I start the installer, go through the configuration, partition the hard drive… Wasn’t too bad – until it told me that my Windows partition is mounted, giving me options “Cancel” and “Continue”. Well, I unmounted the partition and clicked “Continue”. The window disappeared. I waited… Nothing. Ran “ps” – that’s right. The installer is gone. No feedback whatsoever.
I start the installer again. Now, it shows incorrect time. What the hell? I click the button to change it, then think, “who cares”, and go back. The installer freezes. #%&%!!!
I log out and log in just in case…
I run the installer again. Ignore the incorrect time. Click through the partitioning stuff – I already completed it… Nope. Doesn’t work. It complains that I can’t use XFS as my filesystem – or, I have to make /boot on a separate partition. Uh… duh. We’ve gone over that the first time. /boot is now ext3. What is the matter?
I gave up fighting the installer… Went back, and repartitioned the drive again – the same way as the first time. And it worked… No more complains about /boot. Weird.
After that, Ubuntu finally copied all the files to my hard drive.
Well, that’s one friendly installer.
I have upgraded my 6.06 (Dapper Drake) systems to Edgy Eft (where do they get these names?). I picked Ubuntu over FC5, SLED 10, Xandros, and a few other distros because it provided default drivers for my wireless and wired ethernet, all of my Thinkpad T43 oddities, and my various graphics adapters. I find the LiveCD an excellent testbed of drivers, since I can check out connectivity and display issues before committing to a full install. So far, I have Ubuntu installed on 5 systems, 3 real and two VMware images. Also, the free VMware player hosts W2k images on my Ubuntu-native laptop.
I am a happy camper. Besides, the drum roll at startup is cool. 😉
You can hear the drum roll at startup?
Man you are lucky. LOL
Apart from the fact that OSS is very often better than the commercial application, the author has not understood the business model of most Linux companies. The piece of software is never expensive, not even with Red Hat. It’s the support that counts – which doesn’t have _anything_ to do with bad software. It has to do with security issues that can arise long after a Ubuntu release. It has to do with sustaining rock solid stability. The author should contact Novell and Red Hat about it and ask how they make money. He’ll be surprised.
But please, don’t publish such a crap in the future. It isn’t worth it.