I came across it around mid September and after reading up on it, decided to install their September 15 pre-release on my IBM Thinkpad T22. As a follow up to my first review covering the Warty pre-release of Ubuntu Linux, I want to cover some good and bad things I have come across in my day to day use of Ubuntu. Read more.
A month later with Ubuntu Linux – Warty release
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
the server has been osnews-dotted
ubuntu still does not have option to choose boot loader (mbr/first sector/no bootloader). thats the only reason i am not using it.
I did not get to read the article but I am very happy that Warthy have now been released. To the Ubuntu team and to everyone that contributed to this first release I give a friendly congratulations and thank them for all the hard work they have in a relatively short time.
Now I am just waiting for my ordered free CDs to arrive so I can start handing them out. This will be my second distibution to be installed on my PC this year and I am eager to finally get my hands on a working fully functional Gnome desktop. This distribution seems likely to become my favourite very soon unless the next version of SuSE blows my socks off even more
Same here. Even though I liked Ubuntu itself, the fact that it overwrites your MBR without asking any questions is not a good thing to do. For new and unexperienced users it is ofcourse a good feature to have; but an “advanced” button or something similar would’ve been at it’s place there.
and same here.
If a linux distro doesn’t have it I would never install it on my machine.
Yep,
Really nice for a linux newbie like me. Ubuntu erased my MBR without any questions and could not detect my Windows XP partition. Better yet, it did not configured my laptop 1280×800 lcd screen correctly (it did not asked for my opinion on that either).
So I was left with only one OS displaying an unintelligible mess.
If only it did ask for my help…
God bless my Fedora cd. I could restore my MBR in a breeze.
The screenshots of Gnome did look good on OSDir…
http://www.desktopos.com.nyud.net:8090/reviews.php?op=showcontent&i… (although it’s pretty slow too…)
Nice hardware detection even though I wish it could automagically set up XFree86-4 so that the usb mouse and the synaptics touch pad could be used. It detected my wireless mouse, but seemed to have punted on the touchpad (it worked, but just not double-tap). I think others have said that its set up the synaptics touch pad for them perfectly. After fiddling with Xfree84-4, I’ve got synaptics working, but I haven’t tried to see if they’ll both work at the same time.
Turn on “auto-hinting” in /etc/fonts/local.conf by default. It makes a world of difference for small truetype fonts.
http://screenshots.haque.net/screenshots/show/21784/
All in all, I love Gnome 2.8 (Project Utopia/D-Bus/HAL rocks) and with auto-hinting on for the fonts its the first linux desktop I’ve run that I didn’t think looked like ass.
Good job Ubuntu team.
Of course it does. At least I was able to install it without a boot loader. (Don’t remember exactly how though, but it was easy)
The installer displayed my Debian and WindowsXP installs and asked if that were all other operating systems installed and if it were ok to overwrite the MBR.
It is also possible to type expert or custom at the cd boot prompt (don’t remember which one, but you can display a help screen by pressing F2) which will give you more control over the install porcedure.
what kinda icons are u using…they look nice
most of themes dont have icons
for all the types of files
Plz gimme a link
Well, I do not know what you’re talking about. My Ubuntu installation found Slackware and configured lilo in a good way.
i think it is gorilla.. go to http://art.gnome.org/
When I installed Ubuntu I installed the boot-loader into the ubuntu-partition and not into the MBR, my original boot-loader wasn’t touched.
I love ubuntu, but in laptop I don’t have the suspend to the disc or like windows the hibernation. In ubntu we don’t have a service GUI, I know it’s a decision from the team, but I want edit the services, I want desable or enable some services. I know I have the update-rc.d, but I want a GUI.
Sorry, my poor english.
>Turn on “auto-hinting” in /etc/fonts/local.conf by default. >It makes a world of difference for small truetype fonts.
My fonts.local doesn’t say anything about auto-hinting. Please copy/paste here it’s full section so I can add it on my Arch.
Eugenia
These were my main gripes with the system. For instance, on a fresh install, type about:plugins into Firefox.
It’s pretty sad, but only because installing everything you need to make this “easy” Linux functional is, well, not all that easy. I know how to track down Flash and Java and where to put the Flash files and how to make a symbolic link from the java plugin to the browsers’ plugins folder, but I really shouldn’t have to. And those are EASY. Even a newbie should be able to figure it out, if he or she follows the instructions carefully.
But what about online videos? If something isn’t done about the multimedia experience, especially out-of-the-box where it’s basically nonexistent, this is a no-go. SUSE, Mandrake, and Fedora might have the same problems, but it’s just a matter of typing “urpmi w32codecs” from Mandrake w/ PLF added via Easy Urpmi or “apt-get install” whatever from Fedora or even SUSE. Aside from the “marillat” repository, I couldn’t find any of this stuff for Ubuntu, and the packages there seemed very hit & miss, and some were simply broken (for Ubuntu, anyway, though I’m sure they work fine with Debian, for which they are intended).
has anyone had any success/fail stories for ubuntu on amd64? anything i should watch out for? else i’ll report back tonight when i’ve tested it.
Working good here.
I still have one or two problems with crappy stuff like flash plugin and NVIDIA binary drivers (i can run any GL apps i want but Doom3 won’t run) but all in all i’m really satisfied.
Here’s my /etc/fonts/local.conf from Debian (with auto-hinting enabled, but subpixel rendering disabled, since I have a CRT):
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM “fonts.dtd”>
<fontconfig>
<include ignore_missing=”yes”>/var/lib/defoma/fontconfig.d/fonts.conf</in clude>
<!– Uncomment below to enable bitmapped fonts –>
<!–
<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
–>
<!– Uncomment below to enable subpixel rendering –>
<!–
<match target=”font”>
<test qual=”all” name=”rgba”>
<const>unknown</const>
</test>
<edit name=”rgba” mode=”assign”><const>rgb</const></edit>
</match>
–>
<!– Uncomment below to enable the freetype autohinter module –>
<match target=”font”>
<edit name=”autohint” mode=”assign”>
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>
[Let’s the XML-tags are shown by OSNews]
Ubuntu does have the option to where to install boot loader. During the installation, user is asked to where to to install it by specify in the format /dev/hdx for MBR or /dev/hdxx for hdax or hdbx where a & b is your 1st IDE HD or 2nd IDE HD and x the the partition number,respectively.
i am keen to add the following software to a ubuntu system and just have it working (i will be passing the machine onto a non-technical person):
* lyx – (latex front end, abstraction)
* acroread
* scanner software – kooka?
* easy cd burner – eg k3b?
* multimedia – eg mplayer with win32 codecs, and dvd playback
* digital camera memory card reader / usb connection seen as scsi drive? pop up icons on desktop? no need to mount / umount
* flash plugins, realplayer 10 + plugin for ubuntu amd64?
notice some of the sofwtare is kde software? is ubunta a good choice?
Ubuntu does have boot loader option.
During installation, user is asked to where the boot loader should be installed in the format of /dev/hdx for MBR or /dev/hdax or /dev/hdbx for 1st or 2nd IDE harddrive respectively where x is the partition number.
That is so different to what I have on Fedora Core 1. Did you add a lot of that or just uncommented stuff?
Here is mine.
http://www.osnews.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=4483&t=4458#reply_4483
Acroread and k3b are in the main repository for ubuntu and work fine. Automounting memory card readers and any removable storage is built in through HAL and the project Utopia stuff – no configuration required.
I’m not sure about scanners, but lyx is in the universe repository. Uncomment the universe line in /etc/apt/sources.list; universe packages aren’t so well supported by the Ubuntu team, but they generally work fine.
For multimedia w32codecs support see here:
http://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/RestrictedFormats
Flash player 7 is in the repository (flashplayer-mozilla).
just run dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
and u can choose autohinting
Managed to get NWN working with the NVIDIA drivers etc…
Things that don’t work:
Can’t get decent video playback – only totem-xine works, however it has a nasty bug where it freezes the pc for about 30 seconds every 10 minutes or so of movie.
Can’t find mplayer with win32codecs for amd64.
No macromedia flash plugin for amd64.
Otherwise, it’s great. I love the new found zippiness with the 64 bit port
I get the same random hard locks (as described in the article) with Firefox 0.10.1 on Gentoo. The “solution” is to switch to a virtual console (although the keyboard appears to be hard locked, just press Ctrl+Alt+FX and wait a few minutes) and then back to X. It takes a very long time until the machine reacts at all, but once you get to the console Firefox just dies and everything else is running normally again. Very strange.
I forgot to add that this is still one of Firefox’s drawbacks: Epiphany and Opera have a crash recovery which is asking you on the next startup if you want to re-establish the last session.
I’m curious, what do you get with Ubuntu that you don’t get with Debian? For example, Suse gives you Yast. Mandrake gives you urpmi and some drake tools. Redhat gives you something (not sure). Slackware gives BSD init and package tools. What does Ubuntu give you that you can’t get with plain old Debian?
Darren
I ordered my X86 CDs last night and the option for “PowerPC to run on Apple Macintosh G3, G4, and G5 computers including iBooks and PowerBooks” was there so I ordered those too. Anyone have experience with it on PPC?
Ubuntu needs a service manager real bad, that’s the only thing I miss from Fedora.
On of the things that Ubunutu is cool for is the ablity to use Debian packages seamlessly. Just grab an apt mirror stick it in /etc/apt/sources.list. apt-get update and if all goes you should have a list of apps to install.
-N
Advantages over plain debian? I assume you mean unstable, not stable.
Where to start?
– A very stable GNOME 2.8, with plenty of bugfixes
– Project Utopia ready installed and configured
– Hardware autodetection
Basically, they started from Debian unstable, tested and bugfixed like crazy and configured everything well for a desktop. Also, they will provide security fixes for all the packages in main, something Debian unstable doesn’t do.
Yes, they do support Mac hardware. I have a dual G4 867, that would only work well with Yellowdog because of the specail Apple nVidia card. I tried a few versions of Debian Sarge and could only get 8bit color with X. I don’t know if Ubuntu’s success is due to the tweaks they did to X (if any) or to the X Debian maintainers, but it worked with no problem.
The only problem I do have it that their version of MOL does not install. I had to compile it myself (boo-hoo) to get it working. I can’t wait for them to add KDE to their universe, or I may have to add it from Debian.
What are they doing when they recompile anyway? I can’t find any info about that.
the OS, with all its design an security and availability and schedulers, should not allow a userland program to lock the system or break the scheduling like that. especially as it is non-root.
I installed Ubuntu last week as the sole OS on my athlon64 3000+. I consider Ubunutu to be the best amd64 system. Very clean. It took me about two minutes to setup the 64 bit version of Blackdown java for limewire, and as a browser plugin. No flash, since there’s no 64 bit version from macromedia.
My only problems have been getting a sane build environment so that I can compile programs, and firefox crashing constantly.Ubunutu is definitly the fastest OS I’ve installed, although I suspect that my gentoo system was not well configured.
P.S Those icons aren’t gorilla, they’re “human” a new theme from Ubunutu.
The OS isn’t allowing firefox to lock the system. Firefox isn’t locking the system, just X. Obviously, since the preson was able to switch to another virtual terminal.
Ubuntu needs a service manager real bad, that’s the only thing I miss from Fedora.
apt-get install sysvconfig
… then why the heck did they realease a stable version of Ubuntu? They should have hold on more.
Victor.
I really don’t know how the statement’I consider Ubunutu to be the best amd64 system’ and
‘No flash, since there’s no 64 bit version from macromedia. ‘ fits together…
If you just you plain debian, you can run _all_ 32 bit applications from your 64bit install (lib64 is used for 64bit and lib is used as normal.).
Then only thing you get problem with is closed kernel drivers. E.G ATI and wireless (ndiswrapper) – but since you propably got an nvidia card (with 64bit drivers) and all your other hardware is supported in 64bit… Then WHY won’t you have 32bit compatility..?. Debian has the same installer and 99% the same programs. The only thing you could possible miss would be gnome2.8.
I’m intriuged… But then again – what programs is 32bit these days…
Does Ubuntu have these:
1. When I plug in a thumbdrive or an external USB hard disk, does it automatically mount and display an icon on the desktop?
2. Can I make it “sleep” (like how my PowerBook with OS X works when I close the lid)? I’d love to be able to put my desktop into some sort of low-power suspend mode when I’m not using it.
1. Yes. It will also auto-mount dvd, cds, and external harddrives, play video dvd’s (assuming you install libdvdcss), play audio cds, and import photos from a digital camera upon being plugged in.
2. Depends on the computer.
“Debian supports 64 and 32 bit at the same time”
They ALL do. You can run 32bit flash with a 32bit browser. You can install a 32bit browser, then you can run flash on and64. If you’re running flash on any amd64 system, you have a 32bit browser. AND, your browser is running alot slower. FC2 for amd64 ships with a 32 bit mozilla so that you can run flash. I suspect Debian does the same. I can live without flash and therefore, I keep 64bit firefox, and my firefox runs much faster.
shawn wrote:
The OS isn’t allowing firefox to lock the system. Firefox isn’t locking the system, just X. Obviously, since the preson was able to switch to another virtual terminal.
yes, but if it takes seconds or more to switch virtual terminals, and stops acecss to other apps or processes then that is a denial of service. it is in fact a serious issue. but you may be right. in this case it may be X (which runs as root?) which should prevent apps misbehaving. i know my mplayer breaks often in this way.
Thanks for the reply Brad.
> 2. Can I make it “sleep” (like how my PowerBook with OS X
> works when I close the lid)? I’d love to be able to put my
> desktop into some sort of low-power suspend mode when I’m
> not using it.
2. Depends on the computer.
With which computers does this work? Is there a particular motherboard feature or GNU/Linux-compatible chipset I need to look for? I remember reading something about Linux 2.6 using ACPI instead of APM… Is that relevant here?
I’m running linux here on an ibook G3 and sleep works well. However I think I read somewhere that it doesn’t work yet on some newer ibooks and powerbooks so it really depends on what powerbook you have.
Doing a little search on google can help in these situations as the chances are good that somebody posted his experiences with running linux on your model somewhere.
And you can of course just ask and take a look at the ubuntu mailing list.
Thanks Ralph. That sounds like a good place to ask.
I could not initially suspend to memory / suspend to disk with the default Ubuntu distro on my ibm x31. The problem was with the intel iw2100 wifi driver. I patched the current 2.6.8.1 kernel w/ the latest acpi patch from sourceforge. I then tweeked my /etc/acpi files with tips from other linux x31 users. After that suspend to ram/disk works great 99% of the time. I just have the occasional X corruption which i hope will be fixed in the future releases of the new freedesktop Xserver.
-best
-greg
I have been testing this on a spare computer. I love the idea, but I will wait for version two.
If you are just browsing the web, sending email and writing documents, it may work for you. If you want a full, multimedia box that works reliably, look elsewhere. Rhythmbox crashes,totem crashes, sometimes freezing the box hard. I have none of these problems with Amarok or Juk or Kaffeine with the xine backend.
I am dual-booting, MDK 10.1 and Ubuntu and there is a world of difference between the two when it comes to multimedia.
All I had to do is go to the “easy urpmi site”, which you can easily google for, add contrib and plf repositories following the instructions on that site, and type the following:
urpmi libdvdcss
urpmi mplayer-gui (which brings with it all of the needed dependencies including proprietary codecs).
I look forward to future versions of Ubuntu. If they offer KDE as a fully supported option and stick to their pledge of providing security updates for 18 months, they may have a winner in their hands. For now, however, if you want to get real work done and like a lillte multimedia on the side, I would advise -my preferences being in the order in which I state them – going with Mandrake 10.1 or Suse 9.2, when it comes out.
Add ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat testing main to apt sources
apt-get update
apt-get install libdvdcss
apt-get install totem-xine
Now you can play DVDs un Ubuntu.
For streaming web content
apt-get install w32codecs
I’d say it’s a sready as Mandrake is for Multimedia. Both require you to install “illegal” libraries to work.
I have been using Ubuntu for more than 2 weeks and I should say that it is impressive. It is neat, fast (way more faster than Fedora) adn dlook polished.
My only problem is using AAC (M4A) files (Yes, I have an iPod). Does anyone know how to get this working?
Thnx
—note—
should be
apt-get install libdvdcss2
I’ve been using Linux since Redhat 5.2. It’s come a long way.
I like most of the distros I try, some more than others (Redhat 8.0 had a killer kernel, media almost never skipped a beat. That was the last one before they switched to npt…)
Anyway, I like unbuntu for a couple of reasons:
It didn’t ask me many questions when installing. I just want the basic functionality to do the same type of stuff I can do with windows, and I don’t want to answer a whole bunch of questions to do it.
It comes on 1 cdrom so it was easy to download.
The desktop is pleasing to the eyes.
Gnome 2.8 is the best Gnome yet.
Debian pkg management has always been my favorite for linux distros.
Now some things that I didn’t care for as much:
not really crazy about the menus, specifically the “system” or “control” portions of the menus. I realize that they are grouped logically, but for some reason I don’t like them. Maybe I’m used to the way windows and Mac does it.
Took me a while to figure out how to do something as simple as mounting a seperate partition of my hard disk (ntfs and fat partitions) with the gui. Only way I could do it was thru a panel applet or command line.
Could not mount a fat partition. Complained that there was no support in the kernel for fat32. Maybe I did something wrong, but there was support for NTFS. I can’t share data back and forth between os’s if I have read only ntfrs access an no fat access.
would like a url or launcher on the desktop to help you download and configure flash and java. Would like the ability to pay for win32, dvd, and mp3 codecs and have an easy installation. maybe some integration of crossover plugin?
I don’t mind seeing the boot messages, but I think most non-techies find them kind of scary. How about a blank screen with a scroller?
How about having a meta package available that basically installs a nice mono environment? I installed mono but I couldn’t find monodevelop anywhere. I guess I’ll compile it.
How about splitting your instructions into 2 pieces, one for complete newbies/non-techies, and one with more advanced instructions. That way basic things can be covered in a language that doesn’t freak normal people out.
How are you guys supposed to make money? Do you have a paypal donate account or something? How about a subscritption model? I spent a few hundred bucks over the years on redhat and ximian. I’d be happy to throw some money to some hard working hackers. Give me early beta access or priority speed to your mirrors or access into a “members only” chat room or bbs or something. you guys have got to make money unless this is something you do in your spare time. I’d really love to chat with developers and be involved in that sort of thing. I know that’s free now, but I can’t write code for sh*t so let me send you some cd’s or movies or money.
Overall I like the attitude. I like the unbuntu philosophy. Hang in there.
Dan
Firefox was reverted to (a heavily patched) 0.9.3 to avoid the crashes. 4.10 ships with a stable firefox.
If you’re reviewing a distro on a laptop, PLEASE review power management capabilites/detection/setup.
Check this site
http://www.rarewares.org/debian.html
RareWares Debian GNU/Linux Repository for Sid/Unstable
They have a Debian repository so you can use APT.
someone above said that that repository was designed for debian and didn’t work very well on ubuntu – has that been your experience?
Adding a testing mirror sort of defeats the purpose. The minute that you begin mixing packages from testing, universe and Ubuntu, the whole thing will fall apart, possibly not immediately, but it will.
If Ubuntu is aiming for usability, they need to offer their own multimedia packages.
[quote]the server has been osnews-dotted
[/quote]
I prefer OS-Newked ©
tried it on an amd64 shuttle nforce3 system. worked very well. first of the new distros to work with my silicon image (sil 3512A) SATA. others required hacking the installer to modrpbe the sil_sata (bug)and other would only work with a “noapic”. this seems fine.
i did the “expert” install. very smooth. partitioning is not as gui as mandrakre but still works well. broke when it got to install grub in the mbr (shared with winxp). new users wouldn’t know to go to a virtual terminal and “kill” the grub processes. luckilt the installer retries … good thinking ubuntu (mandrake to that too i think, at least for hd detect, which is why modprobe sil_sata works on mdk 10.0 install).
X worked wonders. (nvidia but didn’t yet attempt proprietary drivers).
network, keybaord, language etc all worked smoothyl. i added the non-dhcp install boot option. the install screens give useful succint advice on what “enter dns” means. good stuff.
now – the biggest issue i has was on the reboot when it installs all the software .. .i guess it uncompresses the stuff off the cdrom. maybe i had a corrupted cdrom .. butthis kept failing. it did, to its credit suggest a retry, so after many screenfulls of cryptic broken package and i/o error messages… it went to aptitude (or is it synampic, i’m not a debian person)… pressing “g” to install .. msde a new attempt… this time more installed but some failed… guess what? retry! try it agin and it all worked …
so onto the desktop. well balanced and professional. tried a few of the apps in case the package installation lied to be me about its success. gimp2 works. firefox works. terminal works.
but how the hell do i get root access?
sudo su
I haven’t used Ubuntu but this is the way I get root access with Mac OS X.
are the fonts in this screenshot ( http://screenshots.haque.net/screenshots/view/21784/screenshot-2178… ) the default? if so, they look really good. probably the best looking fonts i’ve ever seen in linux. they’re as nice as Mac!
but how the hell do i get root access?
sudo -s to start a root shell
By default the root account is disabled and sudo used instead. If you wish to enable the root account: sudo passwd root and then, if needed, sudo passwd -l root to get back to the original settings with sudo/root disabled.
For more information see this page: http://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/RootSudo
I’ve heard there’s a difference in how well sub-pixel rendering works depending upon whether you’re using an all-digital display setup (DVI-D) or an analog hookup (VGA, 15-pin mini-DIN).
I’ve never seen it with DVI-D, but with plain VGA (as in the screenshot I believe) I don’t think the sub-pixel rendering looks good at all.
tech_user – mdk 10.1 works great with silicon image SATA, at least the one on my A7N8X-E-DX motherboard; it worked completely transparently.
johnMG – the feature Lumbergh has turned on is auto-hinting, not sub-pixel hinting. They’re different things. sub-pixel hinting exploits the fact that each pixel on an LCD display actually has separate red, green and blue elements and uses just one element to display the “extra” bits used for anti-aliasing, which makes it look smoother on LCD displays. Auto-hinting does something different which my puny brain doesn’t really comprehend.
No problems here with using it. It has no packages that conflict with ubuntu packages. I just installed what I needed and turned off the repository. I wouldn’t go overboard with mixing other debian repos though. And yes, they do need there own multimedia/non-free repo at some point.
I guess I’m just not used to the Debian way of doing things, being a slackware lover.
The installer is horrible – absolutely auful.
There’s no way to go back to things – if I select apt in the installer as a way to install packages, I should also have the option at any time to say “I want to install from CD media instead”
Slackware also uses a curses installer, but it so much better than this horrible effort. Where’s my manual fdisk ? – I suppose it’s there somewhere, I just can’t find it.
How about the option to use lilo instead of Grub ? – I don’t like Grub and I don’t care if it’s more advanced and has more features. Lilo has served my needs for years and I’m very comfortable with it.
Why doesn’t it add my windows partitions to the Grub boot menu ? – I can find nowhere in the install process which enables this, so I guess you have to manually configure Grub.
Well, I’m still trying – I’m determined to get this installed and see what it’s like, perhaps it’ll convert me from Slackware to Debain