I'm really impressed with Ubuntu
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne Mar 13, 2009 4:47 AM EDT |
I have to say after using Ubuntu for a week, that I'm really very impressed with it. I installed Intrepid last Sunday, and I've been playing around with it since, It kind of grows on you, and it's really easy to find out how to do things. I even managed to get my iPhone working with Linux from an Ubuntu how to, in fact my iPhone's filesystem is accessible from my desktop. I don't think I'll be joining the Ubuntu forums anytime soon, I'm still dark on what the admins did when I tried to tell the Ubuntu forums about Felton, namely simply deleting my posts. |
| AwesomeTux Mar 13, 2009 5:08 AM EDT |
There's really no need to join the Ubuntu Forums. Everything you might have a problem with, hundreds of other people have posted about it on the Ubuntu Forums. UbuntuForums.org is full of answers, answers, answers. In fact, when you ask about something that has been answered before, you'll get like 50 people telling you that you're stupid, when had you searched for the problem, it would have been buried by unrelated newer content with similar keywords, anyway. Not to complain. UbuntuForums.org is great if your problem's unique. |
| spikedog Mar 13, 2009 8:14 AM EDT |
I've been using their latest on my netbook. after a little tweaking, I've got it fast and light. |
| tracyanne Mar 13, 2009 9:15 AM EDT |
I've actually got EeeBuntu (Intrepid) on a BENQ netbook, but it was trying Ubuntu on my main lappy that did it. |
| montezuma Mar 13, 2009 12:33 PM EDT |
I have it installed on 5 machines (two laptops and three desktops). Here is my list of advantages and disadvantages: Advantages: 1) Huge community so finding distro specific howtos is easy 2) Debian base so maintenance is fairly easy as are upgrades. 3) Some attempt at user friendliness. I have been impressed by the plug and play nature of many devices (cameras, usb sticks etc) although this may be due to upstream effors as well (gnome and so on. The printing support has really improved recently thanks to Till Kamppeter joining Ubuntu as a dev (he used to be at Mandriva). Disadvantages 1) Bugginess. The 6 month upgrade cycle means a lot of these do not get shaken out. Often you have to wait for a few updates for a release to be really comfortable. That's where Intrepid is at present. 2) Remote developers: There are so many users that the devs have developed a bit of a bunker mentality. I used to get bugs sorted out fairly fast on Launchpad. Not anymore. 3) Obsession of Shuttleworth and others with bling. I know he has to sell it but more focus on stability rather superficial cr@p would be better. 4) Not enough put back into the kernel by the devs. This was a criticism by some kernel hackers. A little unfair since Ubuntu revenue is so much less than Red Hat but nevertheless it has some validity. |
| Steven_Rosenber Mar 13, 2009 1:09 PM EDT |
I'm back on the OpenBSD 4.4 Toshiba laptop (Satellite 1100-S101). I managed to install Java (but continue to suffer with Flash Player 7). I have another identical laptop (except with working touchpad and sound) with Ubuntu 8.04, which I used in the post above. What keeps bringing me back to Ubuntu is hardware detection, a general lack of bugginess (I guess my experience is different than some) and having a complete desktop at the ready (not that 3 dozen other distros also do this). I don't know how well Debian Lenny is doing now that it hit Stable, but I went from preferring Debian to total exasperation when so many things didn't work at various times in the "late" testing phase. I did download a Debian Lenny live image, and I hope to burn it next week and see how the video fares on my various setups. It was video that burned me on both the Toshiba and Gateway laptops. On the Gateway at least, I also had video trouble with Slackware 12 (but not Slack 11 as manifested in Wolvix). Being able to run perfect video with no muss, no fuss, no xorg.conf at all is a very good thing, and Ubuntu 8.04 does that. Coincidentally, OpenBSD 4.4 runs video the same way on the Toshiba -- no xorg.conf needed. I did brew one up for connecting to an external CRT monitor (using X -configure), which curiously enough makes the laptop screen a little hinky, so I disable it the 999 times out of 1,000 that I'm not using an external monitor. I still need to work on the horiz/vert settings for a projector (I couldn't get that working the one time I needed it). While the past tests I ran on my old VIA C3 Samuel box showed OpenBSD to be relatively slow, I can tell you now that on this Toshiba laptop, it's quite snappy. Most of that could be using Fvwm, OpenBSD's default window manager, which instead of dumping for Fluxbox or Xfce I just hunkered down and figured out (the great man page helps). OpenBSD is surprisingly good at detecting hardware (Ubuntu's strong suit, I think), and if I had hardware it didn't like (the Gateway Solo 1450 is particularly OpenBSD-averse), I'd have dumped it. But since the hardware I do happen to be using is all recognized (an Orinoco WaveLAN wi-fi card is FOSS' best friend), I've been sticking with it. I do enjoy being able to find out all the hardware that is compatible (just look here: http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html#hardware) and following the progress from release to release. I've always had trouble figuring out just what I can use with the many, many custom kernels in the various Linux distros. And while OpenBSD is well-documented, it ain't Ubuntu-easy. The challenge of getting things to work is part of it, especially when I'm successful. It's quite a learning experience. I've got plenty of applications, and getting Java to work in Firefox was huge. What would really make me happy is Flash 9. But since the Opera Flash plugin hasn't been updated since 2006, I suppose holding my breath would accomplish nothing. I did try a Linux version of the Flash plugin, but all that did was crash the browser repeatedly. But ... having Ubuntu as a backup is working out quite well. |
| caitlyn Mar 13, 2009 3:30 PM EDT |
@Steven: Wolvix isn't vanilla Slack 11. IIRC they used vconf (from Zenwalk) for video detection in version 1.1.0. That works on my Toshiba where vanilla Slack has never handled video correctly on my older Toshiba laptop. Similarly some Slackware 12 based distros (Zenwalk, Vector 6.0, AliXE) work correctly where vanilla Slackware doesn't. |
| tracyanne Mar 13, 2009 6:22 PM EDT |
Quoting:1) Bugginess. The 6 month upgrade cycle means a lot of these do not get shaken out...... That would have to apply to any Distro that has a 6 month release cycle.. Mandriva, Fedora and open SuSE, for example, So either the Ubuntu Devs are not as good as others or we hear less complaints from the users of others. It seems pretty stable to me, so far, at least as stable as Mandriva 2008.1 (I can't compare it with the equivalent Mandriva version - 2009.0, as I won't use it) Quoting:2) Remote developers: I'm pretty sure I never actually spoke to any developers employed by Mandriva, with the exception of Adam and a the external contributors who took part in the Mandriva Forums, I'm pretty sure I never spoke to a developer. Quoting:3) Obsession of Shuttleworth and others with bling. That would be par for the course, the others also seem to spend a lot of time doing bling, I don't think Mandriva do it well... so much for the furfy that the French are great at design. Quoting:4) Not enough put back into the kernel by the devs. Probably fairly valid, but how much does Mandriva contribute back into the kernel, or any other desktop Linux. Canonical's defence was that they put back into desktop applications, I know that that would apply to Mandriva, as they put a lot into KDE (probably why they arrogantly forced KDE4.1 on us), and having looked around there does seem to me that there is a lot of Ubuntu input into the desktop. |
| caitlyn Mar 13, 2009 6:48 PM EDT |
SUSE has moved to an eight month release schedule. I've actually had more problems with hardware detection in Ubuntu on older equipment than I've had with Slackware and derivatives. Clearly this is very much a matter of what hardware you have. Just my .02... (in your currency of choice) |
| number6x Mar 13, 2009 6:53 PM EDT |
I'll concur with caitlyn. Ubuntu since 6.04 has had very poor video detection on my older equipment. Checking hardware, Asus K8V deluxe with nvdia geoforce fx5200 on two boxes here. slack derivatives work fine as does debian (haven't tried Lenny on the older hardware yet. |
| montezuma Mar 13, 2009 7:03 PM EDT |
Trace, In response 1) Yeah I was comparing Ubuntu to Debian and Slackware primarily there. Also I did say if you wait a few weeks after the release of Ubuntu you will have a more stable platform. Your recent Intrepid experience is consistent with this since it was released last October. 2) I had a lot of positive interaction with Ubuntu developers early on in the project history (say three years ago). In the last year or so I (and others) have noticed a drop off in interaction which is a shame. 4) They do more for upstream than they used to but a lot of bugs I have had have been kernel bugs and the devs were pretty passive there. YMMV. |
| Steven_Rosenber Mar 13, 2009 9:09 PM EDT |
Caitlyn, thanks for the clarity on Wolvix. It really is a great distro with a great mix of apps in both the Cub and Hunter versions. |
| tracyanne Mar 13, 2009 9:25 PM EDT |
Quoting:I'll concur with caitlyn. Ubuntu since 6.04 has had very poor video detection on my older equipment. This is one area where it doesn't seem as flexible as Mandriva (Mandriva will give me almost any aspect ratio, for example, which means it's often difficult to test Ubuntu properly in a VM), but it does seem to work fine with Intel video cards I'm running |
| Steven_Rosenber Mar 13, 2009 10:58 PM EDT |
I'm using Intel video chips as well, and Ubuntu consistently plays nicely with them. |
| ColonelPanik Mar 13, 2009 11:02 PM EDT |
Just put a different video card in my Ubuntu 8.10 box.
Worked. Auto selected the right restricted driver. With in a few days my gig of ram will arrive for an old P4 and I will put Ubuntu on that one as well. Just too much information at hand to run anything else. And I am too old to learn how to run another package manager! |
| Steven_Rosenber Mar 14, 2009 12:23 AM EDT |
Max out the RAM -- best thing you could do. |
| caitlyn Mar 14, 2009 12:41 AM EDT |
@Steven: Have you looked at Wolvix 2.0.0 beta 1 yet? It looks very promising. There is no more Hunter or Cub, BTW. Just one 640MB iso. @tracyanne: This netbook has an Intel chip and Ubuntu plays nicely with it as well. My old hardware includes chipsets by Trident and NeoMagic. Ubuntu is decidedly unhappy with them: a black screen is all I get. The Trident works fine if the distro uses vconf (Zenwalk, Wolvix, AliXe) or vxconf (Vector, Supergamer) but stock Slackware doesn't work (itty bitty screen surrounded by lots of black). The NeoMagic chipset works fine with anything Slackware or related. |
| tracyanne Mar 14, 2009 12:48 AM EDT |
@caitlyn, it sure does. the BENQ has intel, and it works really well. |
| montezuma Mar 14, 2009 11:27 AM EDT |
Hey tracy you are in "august" company. Dvorak likes it too! http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342703,00.asp |
| tracyanne Mar 14, 2009 5:05 PM EDT |
What I'm not impressed with is that I can't suspend/Hibernate after using VLC, even with VLC shut down. When I attempt to suspend I get a warning that tells me I can't suspend becasue VLC is active or I'm currently doing updates. I'm having trouble duplicating that behaviour this morning, but it happened to me on both the netbook and my main laptop yesterday, after demonstrating Video playing. |
| gus3 Mar 14, 2009 5:26 PM EDT |
Is there a stray process left over from VLC that's still running? It might be a good idea to do a before/during/after process tree snapshot, to see what's really going on in there. |
| ColonelPanik Mar 14, 2009 9:19 PM EDT |
Got another piece of old iron running Ubuntu 8.10
1.6GHz Intel CPU
1 G RAM
Old 128 Meg Nvidia card So far everything I have tried has worked. So far..... |
| Steven_Rosenber Mar 14, 2009 10:42 PM EDT |
You call that OLD? |
| gus3 Mar 14, 2009 11:31 PM EDT |
Cue the "back in my day..." comments. |
| ColonelPanik Mar 14, 2009 11:37 PM EDT |
S_R I run as many as four 3D games at a time!
Plus watch a couple of movies and listen to music.
Then there is SETI and FOLDING.
/sarcasm. This is just about the bottom if you want to watch movies, streaming movies. But I sure am not keeping up with the Joneses. |
| tracyanne Mar 15, 2009 2:17 AM EDT |
Quoting:Is there a stray process left over from VLC that's still running? I suppose that's possible, I haven't been able to duplicate it, but on both machines there was a video that failed to load. |
| montezuma Mar 15, 2009 10:27 AM EDT |
The biggest problems I have had with suspend in the past have been to do with video driver so if vlc was playing a video this doesn't surprise. I find intel video drivers work the best. I have an X300 thinkpad with intel video driver which suspends flawlessly even with video streams running. Another laptop (T60) has much bigger problems with its ATI video card. |
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