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Mad Penguin on Ubuntu 5.10 Preview
atrebuse wrote to mention a preview of the Ubuntu 5.10 Preview release, on Mad Penguin. From the article: " Every community has its heroes. From the beginning of time, we've all needed that special something to grasp onto and worship in one way or another. The Linux community is no different. Sure, there are a handful of people known as leaders or visionaries that people look up to, but what other altars do they worship at? The Altar of the Distro. That's the one I'm referring to. According to the DistroWatch page hit ranking sidebar, Ubuntu Linux has held the title of '"most worshiped distro' for quite some time now. So why is that? Is it because Ubuntu is just that good? Is it because the Ubuntu followers are just sitting there hitting their browsers refresh button on the DistroWatch Ubuntu page? What is it about Mary? "
I have no idea if this is why, but I was walking down the street two weeks ago in Cambridge MA and some guy just handed me an Unbuntu cd. Two actually, one live cd and one install. I didn't even realize what it was until I had walked 50 feet past him. That's never happened to me with any other distro...
Ubuntu is good because it took me a moment while reading the replies here to remember that I'm using Ubuntu Breezy. Tech is usually only noticed when something is wrong, so the hallmark of good tech is that it goes unnoticed.
Ubuntu can do eveyrthing Windows did, and thanks to programs such as Cedega, I an even play Guild Wars. The era of Linux on the desktop is NOW.
All rites reversed 2010
Having said that, I like Ubuntu because like Knoppix it rocks at detecting and setting up hardware. I've never installed a distro that got everything right, but 5.04 did. I just had to fiddle a bit with the Xorg config file to get my LCD up to 1600x1200.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
For many people (though not all), Ubuntu *just works* out of the box. That's something else that few distros can claim. Before Ubuntu, I never gave Linux a chance because I wasn't willing to spend hundreds of hours just to get it to the same state of usability that XP gave me right out of the box. It's tough being only semi-geeky. I'm pretty proficient with computers when it comes to day to day tasks (I include "reinstalling Windows" under that heading), but troubleshooting a Linux box takes a much higher level of expertise, and to be honest I just didn't want to fuck with it. I loved everything that Linux stood for, but I just couldn't stand trying in vain for hours to make it work properly.
Then Ubuntu comes along and everything just magically works with the default install. Well ok, I still had a few things that didn't work 100% right, but I didn't mind tweaking with those on my own time. Every other distro I've tried--including SuSe, Red Hat, Mandrake and Knoppix--were somehow broken out of the box (usually, a key piece of hardware wasn't recognized), and I could never find an easy solution. I'm sure there were solutions out there, but I wasn't patient enough to find them--I wasn't satisfied leaving my computer in a halfway-usable state until I managed to find them.
I've often heard the "hood welded shut" analogy when comparing open source to closed source software. It's a good analogy, but I guess my problem was I didn't want to be FORCED to go underneath the hood because my car only turns left and I can't go over 40 MPH without first turning on the windshield wipers. Being able to tweak is wonderful; it's only been a few months now and I'm already doing a lot that I couldn't do on my Windows box. But being forced to basically finish building the car yourself is a royal pain in the ass, at least for those of us that aren't quite ubergeeks. Ubuntu still has a ways to go (e.g. the latest update has actually broken Firefox for many people, including me), but as long as it stays true to its motto, I have confidence that it will continue to remain at #1.
I'm curious as to how well Ubuntu stacks up versus Debian for a competent CLI/non-GNOME-and-KDE user.
One nice thing about Debian is that there seems to be emphasis on making the config utilities all available via a text UI, and I'm a little suspicious that Ubuntu might drop that.
On the other hand, I am vaguely interested in the more-frequent-release concept. It's really great that Debian stable exists, because it means that there's a Free real, stable, server-class distro out there. But all my friends that use Debian on their desktops seem to frequently bemoan how out-of-date the desktop software in stable gets, and how unstable/testing isn't really suitable for day-to-day use.
I currently use Fedora, but after a brief stint with Debian in a router that I'm building, I was quite impressed and considering, for the first time in about seven years, making my main desktop machine run something other than a Red Hat distribution.
What I'm wondering is whether Ubuntu swings more towards Debian (but with more frequent releases) or Linspire (but based on Debian). The former is more what I'm looking for.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Those guys at mirrors.playboy.com have to be careful.
:)
For anyone that missed the jest, check out mirrors.playboy.com (it is WS). One of my favorite places to suggest when somebody asks where they should grab one of a few Linux distros. It's also a handy way to explain to your boss why you were visiting the playboy.com domain.
That and hey! When you support Playboy, you're supporting Linux! Go Tux! (He just got more than most Slashdotters I'm afraid...
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I have to agree too (sorry I don't have any mod point). Ubuntu is the only reason I decided to (and I know this is bad and blah blah) stop using pirate version of Windows. I still use Windows, but only OEM copies that came with my Laptop.
:( Its the only reason I never tried to install Ubuntu on the laptop, I wanna keep paint shop pro somewhere.
My 2 desktops are using Ubuntu and even my girlfriend loves it.
I mean I am programmer by trade, but I don't have interest being a hardcore linux guru. Ubuntu detected everything, from my wireless kb/mouse to the USB key I use to do backups, the community helped me setup NTFS partition reading quite easily. I installed Netbeans and I was coding withing the hour of installing Ubuntu.
Only thing missing is a useable UI for the Gimp. I hate the thing. Its like a russian whore, it does everything you like but its ugly as hell
Am I the only one that actually likes the Ubuntu version names? Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger: they're quite funny, easy to shorten and memorable. And "Hoary" is quite a common word, at least where I come from (South East UK). Linux distros don't have to be dull and corporate - just use "Ubuntu 5.10" to management if it bothers anyone that much.
I don't think they have plans to change the default-enabled repositories, but Breezy comes with an "Add Applications" frontend to Synaptic (and by association APT) which gives a tree view of apps you can install (mirroring the structure of the menu). This includes apps which require other repositories (they are greyed out), and help is given (along with there being a not-as-simple-as-it-should-be-but-quite-simple "Repositories" menu) to add the repository parts that you need to install the other apps.
It's not perfect, but it brings things forward a long way, particularly for novice users.
I have older machines on our SOHO. None of them has dual-cores or multiprocessors, and not huge amounts of memory, so I wanted to upgrade from RH 9 to something still fairly lightweight (I don't want bleeding-edge Fedora). A friend suggested KUbuntu.
/mnt. Nope.
I d/l it, burned a live CD, and tried it.
I have an old Logitech serial mouse. It refuses to recogize it. The menu doesn't offer a way to configure it, and not having used xorg, it took me a while to find the configuration tool. I used that, and when I finished, it said, "ok"... but Kubuntu *still* doesn't recognize my mouse.
Had I built the distro, it would have expected it to also check your hard drive, and automatically mount the partitions under
In effect, it comes across as, "hi, try me, if I work, but you can't make any changes, even in memory." And yes, I *did* post to the new users' list, several times, and got zero responses.
So no thanks, I'll pass. Now I'm looking at SuSE, esp. since it's now owned by Novell, and is moving up in the US market. Jobs, y'know, esp. when all the companies in the country are full of abysmally clueless HR folks, who think there are some mystical differences between, say, RH and SuSE (which just happened to an aquaintance).
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