Ubuntu Feisty Fawn - Desktop Linux Matured

Provataki writes "It seems that Linux on the desktop is getting there, with Ubuntu. Eugenia of OSNews fame wrote a glorifying preview about Ubuntu's next version, dubbed Feisty Fawn. The review talks up the new features, like the restricted drivers/codecs management, easier package management, and good laptop support. The review also lists some of the distro's flaws in the current beta. A good read for those who are curious about what's next for Linux on the desktop. The piece concludes: ' Ubuntu is a distro that obviously has paid attention to detail ... and has found a good middle ground between hard core Linux users and new users from the Windows/OSX land.'"

Comments

Boot up speed?

[Cheapy]

"A positive point about the new version is the booting speed: Feisty boots in 40 seconds on my laptop, while Vista needs about 50 (with McAfee turned off)." How does the current version of Ubuntu compare to this? I have a new laptop and it seems to take over two minutes (while plugged in) to boot up. Oddly, it takes ~1 minute to boot up when it isn't plugged in. I don't understand how that works, but alright. For comparision, Windows XP boots in about 45 seconds.

Re:Boot up speed?

[killjoe]

My XP used to boot up fast too when I first installed it. These days it can take as long as five minutes to boot and display the desktop icons.

Come to think of it I guess I haven't re-installed it in about six months now so it's about time to do that.

Re:Boot up speed?

[LingNoi]

I don't choose an OS because it boots faster then another one and I think both boot almost as fast.

I'm using Ubuntu Edgy on a Laptop and a Desktop. I don't think it loads as fast as XP but again, I don't really care about how fast it boots when its only a couple of extra seconds.

For the record I would guess my boot speeds to be as so..

Desktop:
    Ubuntu Edgy - 35 Seconds - To the desktop and ready to launch.
    Windows XP - 25 Seconds - To show the desktop
                            - extra 5 seconds - To be ready to load apps

I should also note I use Ubuntu more so it could just be that its loading more stuff up to begin with compared to my windows xp partition. I tried to install Vista but it said I didn't have enough space (needs more then 10 gig). :(

Re:Boot up speed?

[Frogbert]

Your DHCP server is probably causing the holdup, try configuring a manual IP address.

With that said I can't for the life of me understand why the boot up doesn't try to acquire an IP address as a parallel process.

Re:Boot up speed?

[zippthorne]

Perhaps.

Though you can get quite a bit of improvement just by going through the add/remove list and getting rid of all the cruft you've installed and forgotten about.

Or had installed for you. (I'm talking to you Wild Tangent and your scummy scam.) System performance is directly related to how much task bar space is still empty.

Re:Boot up speed?

[kasperd]

I have a new laptop and it seems to take over two minutes (while plugged in) to boot up. Oddly, it takes ~1 minute to boot up when it isn't plugged in. I don't understand how that works

You mean it boots faster when running on battery than otherwise? How often do you boot that machine? Some distributions have startup scripts to ensure that background jobs, which would normally be run overnight, does also get run on machines that are always powered off overnight. The details probably differs between distributions. Some delay these jobs for a few minutes, which should ensure that they don't start to run before the system has finished booting. But if Ubuntu don't delay them, they could influence on the speed at which the system boots. I have seen a distribution, where the jobs would not be started on boot, if the system was running on battery. That could be part of the explanation why you see different boot times depending on whether you are running on battery or not.

How carefully did you meassure the boot times? If you just meassured each case once, the difference could be for a lot of other reasons. If you want to be sure, do the following. Flip a coin to decide whether you are going to plug the power or run from battery, then boot the machine. Repeat this ten (or more) times, meassuring the boot time each time.

Re:Boot up speed?

[cheater512]

On Linux it *should* be daemonizing and doing it in parallel.
dhcpcd I know for a fact does this but I havent tried the other clients.

Re:Boot up speed?

[jrumney]

These days, Windows XP brings up its desktop icons quite quickly for me (I haven't timed it, but maybe around 1 minute), but it is another 5 minutes before the system is usable.

Re:Boot up speed?

[ettlz]

Clean out the installed crap, and then delete %WINDOWS%\Prefetch\*.pf.

Re:Boot up speed?

[iBod]

It is and it is a BAD idea to clear the prefetch folder.

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000743.html

Re:Boot up speed?

[scum-e-bag]

Start>Run>msconfig ...and stop some of those background boot time processes.

Re:Boot up speed?

[h2g2bob]

If only I hadn't used all my mod points - please mod up this advice. Ed Bott knows what he's talking about.

Re:Boot up speed?

[slack_prad]

oops... ^Z ^Z
:(
I should really wait a while before doing things

Re:Boot up speed?

[an.echte.trilingue]

I found that Ubuntu booted initially in +/- 50 seconds, but then that as I installed software and services, it slowed to around 4 minutes. The reason for this is that Ubuntu uses readahead to read all of the required files into memory in one sweep as the machine boots, but as you install stuff, files move around and it doesn't know where files are physically located any more. So, the OS needs to ask the disk to read each individual file as the boot scripts ask for them. The solution to this is very easy:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=25426 3&highlight=grub+profile+speed+boot

That alone took my boot speed back down to 80 seconds. Then you can install the package bootchart to see what is taking so long to load and tweak those services to load faster or not at all, depending on what you need. For example, I saw that fsck was taking around 25 seconds on boot, and I gained back about 15 seconds by modifying /etc/fstab so that fsck would not check the FAT32 partition that I use to share files with XP. Bootchart will help you figure out why your box takes so much longer to boot when plugged in, as well.

Now I have a laptop that boots into a usable kde desktop in 47 seconds. I am sure you can do this too. If you need more help, go to the Ubuntuforums, they are full of people who want to help.

Take care

-mat

Re:Boot up speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

On Linux it *should* be daemonizing and doing it in parallel.

Great. Another article demonizing Linux!

Re:Boot up speed?

[larytet]

Ubuntu on laptop - about 2 minutes here (if there is no annoying problem with ACPI). Can take much more if wirelless router is down - me thinks that there are long timeouts when waiting for DHCP/link up

Re:Boot up speed?

[empaler]

I used to have the same problem. After some heavy cleaning with Add/Remove Programs and msconfig I got those 5 minutes down to 2. Wheee.
That was of course after I'd logged on, so I couldn't just turn the compy on.

I found out that one of the biggest sinners in my boot time speed was Windows Desktop Search (installed to use with MSOutlook, but set up for entire compy so I wouldn't have two tools scanning my compy (WDS+GDS))
Basically, my Fedora on a 8+ year old slow-as-hell hard drive has comparable boot speeds to my XPx64 - and the only thing dragging the Fedora down (right now) is the hard drive.

Re:Boot up speed?

[Antique Geekmeister]

And Adobe pre-loader. And the MS Office pre-loader. And all the "download assistants". And all the adware and spyware. And the boot-time tools that try to pre-index your file system, which will definitely slow things as your system gets more files on it.

The list goes on, and some of it is very hard to get rid of. I love SpyBot for blocking it: they don't have the legal fears of calling spyware and adware by their right names, even if it's "selected" by ignorant users who don't know it's incorporated into other downloads. Some commercial anti-virus packages have taken on this business of blocking adware, but it's a legally nasty business for them.

Re:Boot up speed?

[basscomm]

You can also get a bit of a boot time performance boost in XP by periodically clearing out the C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch directory.

Re:Boot up speed?

[VON-MAN]

Correct:
Setting up network interfaces:
lo
lo IP address: 127.0.0.1/8
eth0 device: nVidia Corporation CK8S Ethernet Controller (rev a2)
eth0 configuration: eth-id-00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
eth0 (DHCP) . . . . . no IP address yet... backgrounding.
...snip...
Failed services in runlevel 5: network

I turned on my firewall later than my desktop. But when i logged in my network was running. And this has been working like this for... i honestly don't remember.

Re:Boot up speed?

[eerok]

Start>Run>msconfig ...and stop some of those background boot time processes.

I did this the other day, but my approach was more draconian than most people would like: I killed all net services and net-related software after I realized that I don't use XP on the net anymore, anyway ... I just keep it around for some legacy apps.

I don't think there's many 5-year-old XP installs that are faster and more secure than mine, though, and I'd recommend this for others who dual boot and prefer *nix most of the time.

Re:Boot up speed?

[eraserewind]

... he writes in response to an article saying that there is finally a distribution you don't have to tweak :)

Re:Boot up speed?

[morgan_greywolf]

It is and it is a BAD idea to clear the prefetch folder.

From a performance standpoint, yes it does seem like that based on your accurate technical description of how the prefetch folder works.

However, it would seem that there might be some kernel of truth to the misconception that cleaning out this folder will improve performance. Here's what you said in your article:

When you run a program, Windows creates a .pf file for it in the Prefetch folder. When you run the program again, Windows looks for this .pf file and uses it to determine how to load the program. The hash doesn't contain any portion of the original program code. If you never run the program again, that .pf file never gets used, and in fact it gets deleted eventually. If you're one of those people that tries a lot of programs in a 1-off fashion, much like writers for tech news sites might do, you will probably degrade your performance somewhat. Since Windows only ever keeps 128 files in the prefetch folder, as you describe it, the more 1-off programs you try, the more Windows will delete some of those files in the prefetch folder -- including ones for programs that you use regularly. Clearing out the prefetch folder will not actually help this situation much, if at all, but clearing it out if that's your scenario may actually cause some appearance of improved performance since Windows won't have to scan the files in that folder, nor will it have to delete any files out of the folder. In reality, you're probably hurting yourself more than helping, but it would explain why the myth exists.

Re:Boot up speed?

[AusIV]

I would guess the reasons it takes a particularly long time on some occasions deals with it's ability or inability to find a network. I had a problem for a while that if my wireless card wasn't configured, and I wasn't plugged into a wired network, it would take a really long time looking for a network.

Feisty fixes this by using NetworkManager to handle network connections, but you can also configure a system at least as far back as Dapper to use NetworkManager, and it improves boot speeds considerably when you don't have an internet connection.

I've timed my laptop doing a fresh boot, returning from suspend, and returning from hibernate. It took about 1 minute 5 seconds to get to a usable desktop from a fresh boot, 8 seconds from suspend, and about 50 seconds from hibernate - the network properly configured in all cases. When I used Windows, I'd start it booting, go brush my teeth, type my password, go take a shower, and when I got back it would be at a useable desktop. Hibernate and suspend meant I didn't have to do that often, but a fresh boot took for ever, even after reducing a majority of the startup programs.

Re:Boot up speed?

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Something like that happened to me too!

Since this was years ago, I don't remember the details, but I think I was running GNOME on Debian.

I think there was something misconfigured about my network, but I don't remember what.

May I suggest you to take this to the GNOME or Ubuntu mailing list?
Ubuntu people are amazingly helpful and friendly.

Good luck.

Re:Boot up speed?

[nih]

I found that Ubuntu booted initially in +/- 50 seconds

so Ubuntu can reboot in -50 seconds? beat that ms!

Re:Boot up speed?

[itlurksbeneath]

Probably because most of the things that are to start up after DHCP really need the network interface configured. If your DHCP is spinning in the background, what happens when "ntp" tries to get the current time from the network - error!

Re:Boot up speed?

[an.echte.trilingue]

I found that Ubuntu booted initially in +/- 50 seconds

so Ubuntu can reboot in -50 seconds? beat that ms!

To be fair to Microsoft, I have Ubuntu running on a quantum computer (a Beowulf cluster of quantum processors, more precisely), so it regularly performs tasks before I ask it to. The problem is that whenever I look at the screen the quantum state collapses, which is making it really hard to surf pr0n.

Re:Boot up speed?

[mahlerfan999]

Hi all, this is my first post on slashdot! Shouldn't any journaling file system keep track of the physical location of files? Why do you need to run a program to tell Ubuntu where they are? Shouldn't that be a part of the demands of the file system? (not rhetorical question, honest question-- I want to know) It seems that if one is suffering from a *very* slow boot with Ubuntu, it's because the hardware is too old. Ubuntu seems to cater more towards people having newer pcs. It would be easier, and in the long run more beneficial to instead use Puppy, Debian, Slackware, Arch, Frugalware, Zenwalk, Vector, Gentoo, FreeBSD etc that either caters towards users with older machines or is flexible enough to customize an install for older machines.

Re:Boot up speed?

[bfields]

Of course bootchart is there not as a solution in and of itself (though it's fine if people want to use it that way), but as a tool to help testers and developers understand where the time goes during boot, so that hopefully the collective understanding gained as a result will allow future improvements that will keep boot times down without requiring manual tweaks.

Re:Boot up speed?

[yesteraeon]

But why would I want to wait for DHCP and NTP do do their thing during bootup on my desktop/laptop. DHCP can run in the background, and time can synchronize any time, no need for it to be at bootup. Sure that makes perfect sense on a server which you won't be rebooting very often (hopefully!). But bootup time is a much bigger consideration on the desktop.

Re:Boot up speed?

[Cheapy]

I do it every single day for class. On tuesdays, I boot from battery at about 11:55. This takes barely under a minute. At about 12:58, I boot from AC and this takes about 2 minutes. I time it often enough to see it isn't a "one time thing". I think it might be the mouse I use, but I don't understand how trying to find a driver for a mouse would take 50 seconds. Especially since it's the only mouse I use

Re:Boot up speed?

[Stewie241]

well, considering your talking about boot time vs. wake time, yes, it is an unfair comparison. My Windows notebook will also awake from sleep mode in about 3 seconds, and also uses very little battery while in sleep mode.

Re:Boot up speed?

[m-wielgo]

You should try using suspend. It will save you time, come 12:58 instead of ~2 minute bootup you will be up and running in 1-2 seconds.

Re:Boot up speed?

[wall0159]

Jeez mate - you don't _have_ to, but you _can_. Why are we using Linux again?

Re:Boot up speed?

[Cheapy]

And I would do that, but as it is, Ubuntu doesn't reanimate after being suspended.

Re:Boot up speed?

[Filip22012005]

To be fair to Microsoft, I have Ubuntu running on a quantum computer (a Beowulf cluster of quantum processors, more precisely), so it regularly performs tasks before I ask it to. The problem is that whenever I look at the screen the quantum state collapses, which is making it really hard to surf pr0n. Unless, of course, you are aroused by collapsing quantum states. Many on this website seem to be.

Re:Boot up speed?

[Master of Transhuman]

Which article is totally wrong, because practically everything Eugenia describes doing REQUIRED A TWEAK!

Then she labels this distro "mature"!

It's nuts!

Ubuntu with this many bugs and inabilities is a freakin' DISASTER!

I'm switching back to Mandriva or PCLinuxOS rather than upgrading my Kubuntu. Sorry, but Fawn just sounds like a mess.

OTOH, in my case, I don't run on a laptop, nor do I use ANY add-on consumer hardware (except an external USB drive occasionally and my USB key, both of which work fine (now that I have automount working properly!)). So I'm running a vanilla, four-year-old desktop and Kubuntu 6.10 runs fine on it with only a few stupid screwups (and bad design decisions Ubuntu is known for like conflating root and normal user and dumbing down the system control panel - give me back Mandriva Control Center or YAST!) So I could probably upgrade to Fawn without noticing most of the issues Eugenia found. Still, I think it's time to switch distros again...either to Mandriva who presumably has more people to do testing or to PCLinuxOS where the maintainer is seriously interested in making sure things work as advertised for the most part.

Re:Boot up speed?

[Master of Transhuman]

Well, I run Kubuntu 6.10 on my four-year-old-plus desktop with no significant problems speedwise. The CPU is an AMD 1.67GHz (Intel 2.0GHz equivalent) with 512MB RAM. I don't notice any significant speed differences between it and the Windows XP on the other partition - except that KDE takes longer to open directories with a large number of files in them than Windows does (these are FAT32 file systems for compatability between the OSs except for the main Kubuntu partitions which are ext3).

Boot time definitely seems faster in Kubuntu than Windows XP. Of course, XP gets to the desktop faster, but it's still mostly unusable until all the anti-malware and Windows services stop loading. I haven't timed it precisely, but Kubuntu I'm sure is faster probably by five or ten seconds - and that's even with my large number of image directories that the desktop wallpaper changer has to load before the desktop appears. That's nearly the slowest part of booting on my machine - actually loading the desktop. I do use a wallpaper changer on XP as well, so perhaps that has an equivalent effect.

So I don't know that Ubuntu is more oriented to newer machines, depending on what you consider "newer".

Re:Boot up speed?

[nanosquid]

Funny thing, though: I have a couple of thousand packages installed on my Linux machine and it doesn't seem to hurt boot-up speed.

So, why should I have to do that on Windows?

Re:Boot up speed?

[mahlerfan999]

By modern I was thinking of RAM > 192 MB, (people who bought bargain pcs five and more years ago would face that problem) and a processor around 2 GHz or more. If the poster above took several minutes to boot Ubuntu, it seems pretty likely that he was running into the problem that he is running an old pc.

Don't believe me?

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/deskto pedition
"Ubuntu is available for PC, 64-Bit and Mac architectures. CDs require at least 256 MB of RAM. Install requires at least 2 GB of disk space."

http://www.slackware.com/install/sysreq.php
"Slackware Linux doesn't require an extremely powerful system to run (though having one is quite nice :). It will run on systems as far back as the 486. Below is a list of minimum system requirements needed to install and run Slackware.

        * 486 processor
        * 16MB RAM (32MB suggested)
        * 100-500 megabytes of hard disk space for a minimal and around 3.5GB for full install
        * 3.5" floppy drive

Additional hardware may be needed if you want to run the X Window System at a usable speed or if you want network capabilities."

Re:Boot up speed?

[Master of Transhuman]

Yeah, I've got Slackware 10 running on my old Compaq 400MHz DeskPro 4000 with 256MB. It runs slow, but it runs. I mean by slow, 22 seconds to open up the Kate editor, 30 seconds for Kontact, around 30 for Firefox. I couldn't stand that if I had to use it daily, but it's just my backup machine in case something happens to my main machine.

I think Kubuntu would run on something with 192MB and say 1GHz CPU or above, but the KDE desktop would probably be slow. Might be fine with a lighter desktop - but then most new users don't know about and wouldn't mess with something like Fluxbox or Xfce.

Re:Boot up speed?

[zippthorne]

You *could* use mscofig as mentioned by others and simply disable the programs that run on startup or run as services*. But using add/remove is far less likely to bork your system if you're a casual user. It's also less effective than the aforementioned registry interface.

*Although I wouldn't recommend a casual user mucking around in the registry, on exception I would make is to get disable the messenger service. I have yet to see a program that requires it, and I can't see what it was supposed to do other than provide an open port to the outside world for spammers to send fraudulent error messages through.

Linux Mint

[Terminus32]

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distro with all the codecs & drivers you should need for desktop use, it's worth checking out!

Re:Linux Mint

[johnw]

GPL doesn't allow you to distribute closed source software with the GPL lisenced software Nonsense. Users of the GPL have no authority to make such a restriction and there is none in the GPL. Remember, the GPL is a licence not a contract, so it can't restrict what people can do with other stuff, only what they can do with the stuff covered by the licence.

(The reason why other distributions don't have codecs and drivers with them.). The reason is slightly more subtle than that. The GPL does not allow GPL-licensed code to be incorporated into a larger work where other parts of the work are under a more restrictive licence. There is much debate about whether a device driver with a closed source licence is a derivative work of the kernel, but most distributions err on the side of caution and don't distribute them.

Re:Linux Mint

[dvice_null]

> Nonsense. Users of the GPL have no authority to make such a restriction and there is none in the GPL. Remember, the GPL is a licence not a contract,
> so it can't restrict what people can do with other stuff, only what they can do with the stuff covered by the licence.

License doesn't take anything away from the users. Let's remember that without any license, the program is protected by the copyright law. So you have permission to distribute it at all. So even you are allowed to do what ever you want with the non-GPLed software, you might not be allowed to do the same with the GPLed software. So in practise this means that you are allowed to distribute "A" and "B", but if you are trying to distribute those together, you no longer have permission to distribute the "B".

Here's the interesting part from the license:
"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License"
Source: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

The license mentions an example. A program "A" can be distributed under whatever license or without one, but if the "A" is distributed with GPLed software, the whole distribution must be on the terms of the GPL. If A can't be GPled, then it can't be distributed with the distribution.

Re:Linux Mint

[PastaLover]

The reason is slightly more subtle than that. The GPL does not allow GPL-licensed code to be incorporated into a larger work where other parts of the work are under a more restrictive licence. There is much debate about whether a device driver with a closed source licence is a derivative work of the kernel, but most distributions err on the side of caution and don't distribute them.

You are right but I'd just like to add that the reason codecs aren't distributed can differ wildly. Most of the time it has to do with patent law (it might not be legal to distribute implementations of an algorithm), or the licenses of said codecs (not an issue for mp3 in linux, but maybe others) that don't allow redistribution. It has little or nothing to do with the GPL.

Re:Linux Mint

[Kjella]

he reason is slightly more subtle than that. The GPL does not allow GPL-licensed code to be incorporated into a larger work where other parts of the work are under a more restrictive licence. There is much debate about whether a device driver with a closed source licence is a derivative work of the kernel, but most distributions err on the side of caution and don't distribute them

The driver itself isn't a derivate work of the kernel, e.g. they can freely put that code into a BSD driver or a Windows driver. But shipped as a part of Linux it gets rather fuzzy. Take for example an e-book, where you have one main story and a side story but a reader that'll dynamically insert the side story into the e-book when you read it. Is that a derivative work? Yes, clearly. Is it a derivate work when you distribute it? Is it enough that it is in two separate files, where one doesn't contain any copyrighted bits of the other? It sounds plausible until you think of the consequences.

If so, people could ship .obj files and just link them in the install process, goodbye GPL. It's probably even more obvious with interpreted languages. CMS system written in PHP? Well, my php files don't contain any of your code, so all I need to do is release the file calling my code. You could do the same with e-books (as above), music, videos and so on by merging them dynamically. Clearly that's not how the concept of derived works is supposed to work. If you're shipping them together and they work as a whole, then it would almost certainly be considered shipping a derivate work by the courts. That is an exclusive right of the copyright holder, which menas the GPL is invoked and since the closed source driver can't satisfy the GPL, it's copyright violation. That is why most distros don't ship them together.

So what then if you get it from two different sources? Well, it's not clear at all. On one side you're not distributing a dervative work, on the other hand you're shipping something that can't become anything but part of such a derived work. Is it okay if I just ship the rest, and let each user download the GPL'd libraries through a user script? I think most GPL fans would scream bloody murder. But if I just ship the GPL code, and let each user download the proprietary libraries through a user script, nobody seems to mind. And it also depends what's a plug-in to what, if the application depends on it to work or not. Those are good arguments for that it should be illegal, that you're simply distributing a derivate work by proxy.

It doesn't even end there, because there's such a thing as interfaces. If I write something to work with an interface, you can't ex facto know what it'll be combined with. which is the counterpoint to the last paragraph. That makes it entirely unreasonable to consider it an implicit part of a derivate work. Between those you have yet another shade of gray, take for example the nVidia drivers. They have stubs that are clearly Linux-specific, but most of the code is common in their unified driver.

In short, I see why a lot of lawyers spend a lot of time trying to figure that one out...

Re:Linux Mint

[johnw]

The chunk which you're quoting you've taken out of context. It refers specifically to modified versions of the original work and describes the circumstances under which chunks of that modified version might be distributed under a different licence. It's thus not relevant to the issue under discussion.

HTH

Re:Linux Mint

[LQ]

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distro with all the codecs & drivers you should need for desktop use, it's worth checking out!

Yeah, I'm not falling for that one again. Downloaded, installed, still won't play DVDs because of missing codec. Linux on the desk top will always be "jam tomorrow". Always the next distro.

no NO NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet, 2008 is the year of Linux.

Re:no NO NO!

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Perhaps the thing you are missing is that some of us thinks that OS X is a) horrible to use b) costly c) closed? Until those three issues are resolved, I don't see OS X on any of my desktops. Ask, and I shall explain any of those 3 grievances, and why e.g. KDE+linux (and who knows, maybe Beryl some day) does not have that flaw.

/me waits for the hordes of the OS X lovers to mod me down to oblivion :)

Re:no NO NO!

[unoengborg]

The year of Linux arrives the year Adobe ports their software to Linux.

Linux is already more usable and easy to use and install than windows. The
problem is that windows is good enough for most people, and it have the advantage
of having a lot of applications the people already know how to use.

To make any dent in the Windows dominance it doesn't only need to be better than
Vista, it need to be significantly better.

Re:no NO NO!

[LingNoi]

Theres already a few things that I like, although everyone is different of course these problems really bug me on Windows XP and wish/hope they fixed them in Vista or Vista+1..

- No need to defrag your system.
- Can have lots and lots of files in the same folder without limit (not so important for everyone I guess)
- When you cut and paste DVD movie files from one folder to another on the same Hard Drive its almost instant (as in doesn't copy anything just reallocates it).
- When you copy files from one location to another and theres no space left it doesn't delete all the files that you just copied.
- When you copy files to a new location it checks that there is enough space for it to copy all the files.
- When your doing something CPU intensive it doesn't slow down the GUI. You can watch a movie even though the CPU is at 100% doing something else.

I hope this is the "Firefox wakeup" moment for Microsoft to improve their Desktop with these features too. Also there are many bad points about Ubuntu too but this would be my wish list for Windows.

Also the file copying feature that doesn't delete the files you copied is something windows needs a lot. Yesterday I was doing some data recovery with Knoppix to a USB pen and my boss kept saying "Check how big it is before you copy it". I didn't understand why until I asked him and he explained that its because it would delete the files if its too big for the USB pen.

I had to explain to him that doesn't happen on Linux systems only Windows. Does that happen on the Mac? I don't think it does..

Re:no NO NO!

[gbulmash]

To make any dent in the Windows dominance it doesn't only need to be better than Vista, it need to be significantly better.

It's not just being better, it's making the move more painless. Face it, even if your application is better, if there's a learning curve to do simple things, people won't switch. If your life revolves around ACT!, you'll be using the OS that supports ACT! (or more pointedly, the OS that ACT! supports).

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Most people don't learn to operate computers and software from a conceptual and fluid point of view that allows them to adapt easily. Then learn it by rote, step-by-step in a sequence of operations. They may not understand why they perform those operations. They just know if they follow the steps they've been taught, they'll get the result they want/expect.

Some people see life as an adventure of learning, but they're a minority. Having to learn new programs (via learning new steps) scares people. It makes them unhappy. And if they've been doing a set of steps for a few years, those steps have become habitual. So you not only have to teach them the new steps, you have to break them of the old ones. Breaking habits is unhappy work.

Furthermore, if you read TFA, look at the various driver problems she had. If the hardware and software don't play nicely "out of the box", the deal is off for most people. And you can angrily tell them to buy different hardware, but Joe Shmoe is going to buy what looks neat to him. If Linux won't run on it, Windows probably will, and since he knows Windows already, it's just the path of least resistance.

Being "better" is immaterial. Either sticking with Windows has to get so painful that people exceed their tolerance level and will switch to anything that promises (and delivers) less pain, or Linux has to make it SO easy and painless to switch over, that people will do it just to save a few bucks.

- Greg

Re:no NO NO!

[cheater512]

I agree with you completely. GP's argument is that because Mac can run everything else inside it, it therefore is the ultimate OS.
Get VMware and Linux is the ultimate OS using the same argument.

The ultimate OS should be determined based on merits of the operating system itsself, not what other operating systems you can run to get required features.

Personally as a guy who has on average 6 - 10 consoles open at any one time, Mac OS X isnt flexible enough to be the ultimate OS.
You just cant get the necessary power from it when you need it.

Linux can on the other hand adapt to be n00b friendly or power user friendly.
The fact that you have distros like Ubuntu and Gentoo as two extremes is proof of that.

Re:no NO NO!

[cheater512]

Too true.

The good news is that Linux is slowly trickling in mainly in government.
More and more people are getting exposed to it and they will learn the new step by step procedures out of necessity.

Re:no NO NO!

[Serious Callers Only]

Personally as a guy who has on average 6 - 10 consoles open at any one time, Mac OS X isnt flexible enough to be the ultimate OS.
You just cant get the necessary power from it when you need it.

Please define 'power' and how OS X falls short.

PS I wouldn't call OS X the 'ultimate' OS either, but you seem to be dismissing a hand-waving argument with another one about power-users.

Re:no NO NO!

[robinvanleeuwen]

"The year of Linux arrives the year Adobe ports their software to Linux."

We hear that all the time but i don't believe there's any truth in that
statement. I tried to switch MS office users to OO, and allthough it worked
they all demanded to have MS office back. Even though a newer version came
out and the company had to pay big dollars for the upgrades, the management
said. So what, even i tried OO , but everything is soooo much different
(meaning, language (dutch) was a bit inconsistent in comparison to MSoffice and
some functions where in a different location).

Now i even understand why one of the highest management guy's over there didn't
want to switch. He was kind of an Excel guru and used about every function in Excel,
and had 5 years of data in Excel documents. Not all of them converted the right way(tm).

But other users used Excel only as a calculator , or add adresses to a name, and MS Word
for birthday cards. And even they complained and bluntly refused to use OO. Management
agreed with them offcourse.

So it isn't just Adobe's products, it's the whole mindset of people. Not to mention
Desktop in the office where custom software has to run. Try bookkeeping on linux. The
company who makes that software (biggest in the netherlands, the only one that has all
the functionality we need) bluntly refuses to make a windows version. In the newest version
they even require a Microsoft SQL server, wheras previous versions would run happily of a
samba server.

Telebanking software. Banks refuse to make Linux clients.
Tax software, no linux clients.
Salary payment accounting software, No linux client, almost the same story as the
bookkeeping i mentioned.
Various government programs (automaticly transfer data about sick days, salaries, free time
, vacation, days off etc) to all the various government departments, all Windows only.

We don't use adobe products. Only PDF readers and they are a dime a dozen.

kind regards,

Re:no NO NO!

[PopeRatzo]

I like the OSX interface very much. I would immediately buy a copy if it ran on the system I just built, or the one that I plan to build next year.

Re:no NO NO!

[MostAwesomeDude]

- No need to defrag your system.
- Can have lots and lots of files in the same folder without limit (not so important for everyone I guess)
- When you cut and paste DVD movie files from one folder to another on the same Hard Drive its almost instant (as in doesn't copy anything just reallocates it).
- When you copy files from one location to another and theres no space left it doesn't delete all the files that you just copied.
- When you copy files to a new location it checks that there is enough space for it to copy all the files.
- When your doing something CPU intensive it doesn't slow down the GUI. You can watch a movie even though the CPU is at 100% doing something else. The first two items are general attributes of ext3 and reiserfs. The next two are part of the kernel's generic FS layer (if I remember correctly.) That last one is just due to Linux's thread scheduler being very intelligent.

Microsoft is not likely to adopt ext3 or ext4 support, much less reiserfs support. File copying is fairly old and not likely to be updated. It's feasible, though, that Microsoft could improve their thread scheduler, but it's not going to be a high priority because they will be busy for a while writing security patches for Vista and I highly doubt they will release kernel optimizations for the newly obsoleted XP.

Re:no NO NO!

[Overzeetop]

But didn't you know that NTFS doesnt' need defregging (I'm kidding, but that was the original claim)?

I must admit I've never hit a file limit on any of my systems, though I don't have drives bigger than 300GB.
When I cut and paste on the hard drive it is close enough to instant, unless there are a buttload of file entries that are being copied. The only time that's not true is if I copy from one partition to anohter, inwhich case it better damned well copy the files.

I haven't seen the copy/delete happen on any of my win boxes. The default failure is annoying, since it doesn't pause the op, but there's no delete.

Yeah, a little intellegence on the space check would be nice, though it would require more upfront calulation time.

I can easily watch a movie and have something else running while the CPU is at 100% - just promote the DVD player sw to a higher priority. I can't do it while something else is using 100% of the CPU, but then linux can't either. You can't run something that takes CPU cycles while something else is useing 100% of them.

Still, I've never seen this copy-delete response. Even cut-paste doesn't delete the original file until the copy is successful.

Re:no NO NO!

[LingNoi]

Let me clarify about the copying.

I mean:

1) when you for copy files to a USB pen and then the USB pen is full. It will display "Can not copy files....its full.." and then delete the files it just copied to that USB pen.

2) If you copy 100 files and then delete one of the files you are about to copy it will cancel the whole operation (although this one has only happened to me twice when copying large amounts of data still could be fixed).

Re:no NO NO!

[PastaLover]

But didn't you know that NTFS doesnt' need defregging (I'm kidding, but that was the original claim)?

It doesn't. At least not if you don't fill the drive up and the gotcha there is that you can't even defrag NTFS when you fill your drive up. I've never seen any figures saying defragging somehow improves performance, I have however seen it degrade mine. So no I honestly don't think NTFS needs defragging and I don't think you should be defragging an NTFS drive. I don't however use windows all that much so maybe I've just been (un)lucky.

Re:no NO NO!

[evilviper]

The year of Linux arrives the year Adobe ports their software to Linux.

I certainly don't believe 90% of computers run Adobe products (Flash/AcroRead not withstanding). That might make a dent in certain sectors, but not many.

Re:no NO NO!

[evilviper]

Having to learn new programs (via learning new steps) scares people. It makes them unhappy. And if they've been doing a set of steps for a few years, those steps have become habitual. So you not only have to teach them the new steps, you have to break them of the old ones. Breaking habits is unhappy work.

The problem with that theory, is that Microsoft makes significant changes to the Windows user interface every release. XP is hardly anything like 98.

Applications don't usually change as dramatically, but they certainly do have numerous smaller changes from version to version, and yet people will still upgrade.

People are stupid, but not nearly as mindless as you give them credit for.

Re:no NO NO!

[LocoMan]

I have to agree there... that might be the year of the linux as a graphic/video production computer, but not really the desktop.

At least here in Venezuela, much more important than adobe apps would be IM's, specifically MSN. And yes, I know Gaim can connect to MSN, but I mean the whole deal, webcams, animated smileys, everything that they come with, and as soon as they come with, or they'll be heading back to windows as soon as they get a "your friend tried to send you a (insert shiny thing here) but you need the latest version of MSN to view it that is available only for windows" message.

Re:no NO NO!

[dr.badass]

/me waits for the hordes of the OS X lovers to mod me down to oblivion :)

You must be new here. Bashing anything always gets modded up. It's positive comments that get buried.

Re:no NO NO!

[Moochman]

1) when you for copy files to a USB pen and then the USB pen is full. It will display "Can not copy files....its full.." and then delete the files it just copied to that USB pen.

Actually, in my experience Windows XP does not delete the files it already copied. However, since it copies files in disk order (rather than alphabetically) it's near impossible to figure out which files were already copied and which were not. One solution if I recall correctly is to use xcopy from the command prompt, which does result in an alphabetical copying process, thereby making it a lot easier to pick up where you left off.

Re:no NO NO!

[pathological liar]

"no need to defrag your hard drive" isn't a feature, and it's barely accurate. Once upon a time someone asserted that there was no point in defragging your hard drive on a multi-user system because with the multitude of unrelated requests, even assuming zero fragmentation you'd still have to scan all over the disk.

That doesn't hold true for a single user system.

Re:no NO NO!

[mhall119]

Mac wins, you can run windows, fedora, debian, whatever you want. You can prototype networks build linux servers windows servers and your grandma can still get to her email without tech support telling her to disable her firewall. This is *the* ultimate desktop, windows should be deployed where best, linux should be deployed where it's best suited and the human interface should be Mac OS X.

Sounds great, where can I get a copy that I can install on my Dell?

Re:no NO NO!

[Matt Perry]

No need to defrag your system.

Unless you are using FAT you should not be defragging your filesystem at all. NTFS is pretty efficient about how it stores files on the hard drive. Modern filesystems do a pretty good job at storing files and preventing fragmenting. They spread the files out over the hard drive and leave space between so they can easily be expanded. Once you defrag and compact all your data to the beginning of your drive, the filesystem will have to write data elsewhere if you expand a file. You'll suddenly find yourself needing to defrag often just to maintain the efficiency that you would have had had you let the filesystem do its job in the first place.

Re:no NO NO!

[LingNoi]

Actually, in my experience Windows XP does not delete the files it already copied. However, since it copies files in disk order (rather than alphabetically) it's near impossible to figure out which files were already copied and which were not. One solution if I recall correctly is to use xcopy from the command prompt, which does result in an alphabetical copying process, thereby making it a lot easier to pick up where you left off.

No, no, no..

A user shouldn't have to touch the command prompt. This is why Windows will never be "ready for desktop".

Just joking but I couldn't miss such an opportunity. :D

Re:no NO NO!

[EsbenMoseHansen]

/me waits for the hordes of the OS X lovers to mod me down to oblivion :)

You must be new here. Bashing anything always gets modded up. It's positive comments that get buried.

Hmm. I can't use the new defense. But I admit I was quite wrong about being moderated into oblivion. Seems I am not quite alone in not liking Mac OS X (on a personal level, it's not like I want anyone else to stop using it if it works for you :) )

Re:no NO NO!

[anaesthetica]

Not yet, 2008 is the year of Linux.

Whatever. Edgy Eft? Fiesty Fawn? Wake me up when Xanthic Xenu is released. Then it'll be ready for the desktop, running Operating Thetan VI software.

Re:no NO NO!

[thinkninja]

I agree with you completely. GP's argument is that because Mac can run everything else inside it, it therefore is the ultimate OS.
Get VMware and Linux is the ultimate OS using the same argument.

OSX & Parallels is much better than VMware & Linux for desktop usage. Either way, just because both can virtualize Windows doesn't make either host superior...and it's not even a core feature of the OS but a 3rd party application. So I agree that this is an irrelevant argument.

The ultimate OS should be determined based on merits of the operating system itsself, not what other operating systems you can run to get required features.

Personally as a guy who has on average 6 - 10 consoles open at any one time, Mac OS X isnt flexible enough to be the ultimate OS.
You just cant get the necessary power from it when you need it.

As someone who's just switched to OSx86 from Debian, I think I'm semi-qualified to offer opinions on *nix v. OSX desktops. If anything, my understanding of OSX is rather limited.

So what features does OSX lack? I'm trying to think of anything I miss. One problem I will admit to is OSX's rather braindead disk utility which would not allow me to create new partitions without reformating my boot partition. I used parted from a live-cd in the end.

10 terminals? I use screen & zsh (both of which come with OSX, BTW). Terminal.app is okay. Not brilliant but sufficient and there are alternatives.

Linux can on the other hand adapt to be n00b friendly or power user friendly.
The fact that you have distros like Ubuntu and Gentoo as two extremes is proof of that.

It's flexible. You (or the developers) adapt it to your needs. That level of flexibility is just not necessary on the desktop. Not that it's a inherently a bad thing, it's just irrelevant.

Re:no NO NO!

[Overzeetop]

It does help. I have a disk tower that I copy large files to (DVDs and other video). As I tranfer/transcode/copy around stuff from my TiVo, the drive gets fragmented. By defragging the disc I actually do get better transcode (actually just wrapper mods) throughput due to fewer random seek ops. Usually I've got enough space free on my working drives it doesn't matter, but in special cases it can help.

I'm not sure how any os could claim that defrag of a mechanical drive would never be necessary, without either a potential hit to performace or because it continuously defragged (another performance hit). It's a fact of life on mechanical media.

Re:no NO NO!

[jamesshuang]

For one thing, changing between the 6-10 windows with a single keyboard shortcut, or knowing at a glance exactly what each console is running at the time. And no, expose is not the answer, because it requires a lot more than a single smooth motion (alt-tab) to get to any specific window.

Developing stuff on OSX is a pain. I can't SEE what's running, I can't switch windows conveniently or without the mouse. And who the hell thought of the idea of switching the alt and ctrl in the console?! I get used to alt-everything for shortcuts, go into terminal, and WHAM nothing works anymore. Get used to ctrl-everything, switch out of console, WHAM nothing works again. It's a constant battle with the operating system to do what I want.

Re:no NO NO!

[Antique Geekmeister]

There are limits to the "many files in the same filesystem". It's still possible to overwhelm any filesystem with too many files in it

ReiserFS has other problems: see. (See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 007/03/09/BAG1OOI9ID46.DTL and numerous other articles.) It's always bad news for a filesystem when its author manages to lose something that way: it tends to hinder development, and make one wonder what else is buried where.

Re:no NO NO!

[pkulak]

I've given up on using Linux as a desktop. I like tweaking and all, but damn, your whole life will go down a Linux black whole if you try to use Linux as your main desktop. I don't mind paying Apple a premium (and it's not that bad anymore) for allowing me to get a computer that works great out of the box and can be configured to play nice with my Linux server. Setting up OS X as a server is a pain, and setting up Linux as a desktop is a pain. My life is a lot better with both.

Re:no NO NO!

[cheater512]

Both distros (can) use the exact same software yet they are tailored to completely different types of people.
Seems pretty adaptable to me.

Re:no NO NO!

[jamesshuang]

Two issues with what you've said so far - alt-tab doesn't switch individual windows by default, and there's no good place to find out. Thankfully, you've actually shown me a very useful bit of info, and that will greatly lessen the hassle of using mac. Also, that program that you showed me still requires a key be pressed to see exactly what's running. What exactly is wrong with the taskbar? Was it too ugly for your saintly OS of beauty?

Also, don't confused me with a windows user. The lack of multiple desktops becomes especially annoying for me after a while. But at least the presence of a taskbar keeps me sane.

Re:no NO NO!

[marcosdumay]

What somehow contradicts your point is that people today are using computers. They didn't use them 2 decades ago, so they LEARNED how to use computers, and adapted to them.

But today, they refuse to learn how to use Linux. That happens because they aren't as compeled to learn Linux as they where compeled to learn "computers" at past. It can change (and only may change) if Linux becomes a lot more usable than Windows, but that must be a significative difference, like the GP says.

Re:no NO NO!

[Master of Transhuman]

"Can have lots and lots of files in the same folder without limit (not so important for everyone I guess)"

Important to me as I have literally thousands of files in some directories. Some are image files, some are Web documents. I try to organize the document files under subdirectories when I get around to it, but the image files tend to be in one directory (although if I have over 2000 or more images of one subject, I break it up into more than one directory.)

One thing I notice about Kubuntu is that it's slower opening directories with over a thousand files in them than Windows is. Under a thousand files I don't really notice it, but significantly over a thousand files and Kubuntu definitely takes more time to open the directory and list the files. You can hear the disk thrash. I suspect it has to write some cached stuff out to bring in the new stuff. Once the new stuff is in, though, subsequently opening the same directory is fast. Perhaps I should up my RAM from 512MB to 1GB and see if that makes a difference in the initial opening.

Re:no NO NO!

[Master of Transhuman]

"It's always bad news for a filesystem when its author manages to lose something that way: it tends to hinder development, and make one wonder what else is buried where."

Heh, funny!

Got to agree - the Reiser FS is history unless it's taken totally away from him no matter how the court case turns out. I expect it will be, though whether it will advance much without his vision for it, in comparison with ext4 or whatever, I'm not sure.

Re:no NO NO!

[Master of Transhuman]

Speaking of zero size files, try deleting those sometime in Windows. Fun. Windows hasn't a clue what to do with them.

Knoppix 5.1.1. with the ntfs-ng system deletes them with no problem.

The real issue I have with any file copy process is when it can't read one file and just dies. What it should do is continue the copy process, then present a list of files it couldn't copy at the end, so you know what went wrong. Rolling back the copy process is not a good approach, either. I agree, figuring out which files need to be copied then is a pain - but would be better handled if the file copy were alphabetical.

As for modifying the input data during the process, I see no reason why the system can't handle in the same way - skip the missing file and complete the rest of the operation.

This is the difference between the UNIX "do the right thing, and do it quietly" approach vs the Microsoft "dumb down the process and then screw up" approach.

Re:no NO NO!

[Master of Transhuman]

Like the other poster who does video work, one of my clients is a media conversion company.

Yes, their drives are horribly fragmented, both the NTFS ones and the FAT32 ones (they have both). They have been loading, editing, and unloading large video files probably for the last year or more without defragging. Their disks are showing fragmentation from 40% to 90%. And it impacts their video capture rates.

Re:no NO NO!

[Master of Transhuman]

"He was kind of an Excel guru and used about every function in Excel,
and had 5 years of data in Excel documents. Not all of them converted the right way(tm)."

This is the real problem - people burying critical company data into a format that isn't open, isn't even the right format for long-term storage and analysis, and in many cases, not even the right format for doing the job in the first place (Excel is not a database, nor is it a financial analysis program, no matter how many people use it for that.)

In other words, poor IT management leads to users running amok resulting in vendor lock-in.

Add in the lack of planning for dealing with such issues in an OS migration, and it's not surprising migrations don't always work.

Add in the proprietary software companies who tie everything to Windows even when their software doesn't need to, and it looks hopeless.

The answer of course is for OSS programmers to put the proprietary companies out of business by developing better software. It's not rocket science and OSS programmers could make themselves a nice living by developing open software that does the job and then supporting it.

I'm coming to the conclusion that it's a waste of time even trying to convert most corporations to OSS. Maybe it's better to deal strictly with startups, assist them in doing IT right in the first place, then wait for them to put the dumb corporations out of business. May take twenty or thirty years, but avoiding the fights with corporate idiots might be worth it.

Put all these morons out of business and make the money they're too stupid to save.

Re:no NO NO!

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Please explain what about it is horrible to use.

First, I do not want to use 3rd party apps on my desktop, so any solution that includes this is out. This is because I find that such apps tends to conflict in interesting ways, and the desktop is something you want steady-as-a-rock. So while some of the points below probably have 3rd-party "solutions", that won't help. Secondly, some of the below might be configurable, I never really found a centralized configuration utility... I didn't stay long. But from my experience, a quick random not-complete list of grievances:

No obvious, configurable taskbar (Has to go to the right, be coverable, about 120px wide, pop to front if the mouse hits the right lower left or I press a key).

I need at least 4 desktops. 6 is ideal for me.

The application menu was on the desktop. Not sure if this is configurable, but that is one horrible idea.That means, to use a menu, you first have to activate the application, and then click the menu.

The emphasis on icons rather than text. Icons are fine for browser buttons and decorations, but it's the text that makes something instantanously recognisable.

I never did find the package manager. If I need an application, I want to bring up an app, and search for the apps using keywords, tags or whatever. Then click to install.

Same, but upgrading all apps and libraries to the newest version.

I didn't see how to get buttons for "stay in front", "shade" and similar on the window decorations. That is of course, a must.

I didn't find an easy way to make any application fullscreen. I am pretty sure I just missed that one though, noone would make a desktop environment where this wasn't easy *somehow*.

Maybe it was an old version, but for some reason I couldn't get the background image to be an SVG. Of course, it might just have been a defective svg. Not that important, just a small thing.

I give thanks every time I return home to my Mac, after using Linux and Windows all day. I want something that works, works well, and doesn't need me to screw with some config file (Linux) or have 4 different malware programs running at all times just to have a semblance of safety (Windows)

I'm happy to hear it works for you. Not that I ever use windows, nor do I "screw" around with config files unless it takes my fancy to do so. I just find Mac OS X a very limiting desktop environment, and worse OS. It is true that everything just works, but you pay with both money, flexibility and power. Not worth the price, I find. Still, I occasionally recommend Mac OS to some people. As sort of like a Gnome, extreme edition :)

Re:no NO NO!

[squidinkcalligraphy]

You can prototype networks build linux servers windows servers and your grandma can still get to her email without tech support telling her to disable her firewall. This is *the* ultimate desktop, windows should be deployed where best, linux should be deployed where it's best suited and the human interface should be Mac OS X. Call me a tight-arse, but a kernel + GUI shouldn't need 512 Megs of RAM to run. That was my (brief) experience with a MacBook. Real nice, but it crawled as soon as you started actually _doing_ anything with it (apart from looking at it's niceness). Of course you could always add more RAM, but I contend 512 megabytes ought to be enough for anybody. :)

Re:no NO NO!

[mako]

No obvious, configurable taskbar (Has to go to the right, be coverable, about 120px wide, pop to front if the mouse hits the right lower left or I press a key).

Yep. Fundamental difference between Windows and OS X. I hate the taskbar. Too small to represent the number of windows open at a given time or provide useful information or features. It's slow, but I guess, easy to understand for new users. Not really sure of the point. The fact that all Linux/BSD window managers except WindowMaker copied this glaring flaw is lamentable.

This is nicely handled by Expose. One key-press and all applications or windows within a single application are available and recognizable. Combined with keyboard cycling of application groups and windows within application groups it is easy to get where I need to go. Using 20+ windows at a time is easy. Taskbars break down long before this point.

I need at least 4 desktops. 6 is ideal for me.

Virtual desktops are badly needed in OS X. Fortunately they will be in the next release.

The application menu was on the desktop. Not sure if this is configurable, but that is one horrible idea. That means, to use a menu, you first have to activate the application, and then click the menu.

Sort of. In Windows if an application is minimized or otherwise obscured you will still have to activate or click on it to get to the menu. Same with Gnome, KDE, fluxbox. But this is not really something worth arguing about. Now that I'm used to it, it is quite nice especially if have a lot of windows open for a single application, like terminals.

The emphasis on icons rather than text. Icons are fine for browser buttons and decorations, but it's the text that makes something instantanously recognisable.

I don't know what this means.

I never did find the package manager. If I need an application, I want to bring up an app, and search for the apps using keywords, tags or whatever. Then click to install.

Again, nonsensical. There is no need for packages because app installation removal is handled by drag and drop. There are package management systems (fink/ports) if they are wanted/needed.

I didn't see how to get buttons for "stay in front", "shade" and similar on the window decorations. That is of course, a must.

Yep. Shading is not part of OS X. Stay in front is up to the application programmer.

I didn't find an easy way to make any application fullscreen. I am pretty sure I just missed that one though, noone would make a desktop environment where this wasn't easy *somehow*.

Third button from the left on every window.

Maybe it was an old version, but for some reason I couldn't get the background image to be an SVG. Of course, it might just have been a defective svg. Not that important, just a small thing.

No clue.

I'm happy to hear it works for you. Not that I ever use windows, nor do I "screw" around with config files unless it takes my fancy to do so. I just find Mac OS X a very limiting desktop environment, and worse OS.

Again nothing listed here could be considered limiting. The principal difference outlined is the taskbar. This is a Windows abortion that unfortunately so many people are used to they don't realize how ridiculous it is. If the taskbar is that important than OS X is definitely not for you.

It is true that everything just works, but you pay with both money, flexibility and power. Not worth the price, I find.

No, you don't pay with flexibility or power. There is not a single thing that can be done on a linux desktop that can't be done with OS X. Principally because I can run any window manager available for Linux on top of OS X if I choose. (I don't)

Still, I occasionally recommend Mac OS to some people. As sort of like a Gnome, extreme edition :)

Gnome and its ilk

Re:no NO NO!

[robinvanleeuwen]

"In other words, poor IT management leads to users running amok resulting in vendor lock-in."

Well, the problem was that OO was still unusable when management started using Excel, it was dead
slow, and by the time it was usable the users were already acustomed to MS Office (locked in)

"Add in the proprietary software companies who tie everything to Windows even when their software doesn't need to, and it looks hopeless."

It doesn't look hopeless, it IS hopeless. Instead of companies being more and more open to other platforms,
they tie themselves further and further to Microsoft products. The MS SQL server i mentioned had to be an MS sql server
that only allowed Windows 2003 or UP, we use more than 5 users so, a larger licence was needed than the Small Business version.
And a dedicated server. We had to buy an extra box just for the accounting software. Add to that the expenses we had to make for a
custom program to convert the data from our Linux/Samba happy apps to the accounting server so that the data
was up to date. All in all it's a very, very ugly solution for a problem that shouldn't even exist in the first place, because
the data is semi up to date, not realtime. In the old situation we could use the software to directly tap into the custom database
for the needed data. Now it has to go into the MS SQL server first.

Simular problems exist for other apps to. Besides that, you'll always need a windows box, which makes maintenace a hassle.
Backups are a drama, the software for banking is done on the windows box so it had to be fitted with an extra tape backup,
which requires the computer to be on 24/7. Add to that the Windows problems it has with sleep/hibernate functions, which
causes isomnia, migrane, kidney failure and an ulcer.

Re:no NO NO!

[EsbenMoseHansen]

No obvious, configurable taskbar (Has to go to the right, be coverable, about 120px wide, pop to front if the mouse hits the right lower left or I press a key).

Yep. Fundamental difference between Windows and OS X. I hate the taskbar. Too small to represent the number of windows open at a given time or provide useful information or features. It's slow, but I guess, easy to understand for new users. Not really sure of the point. The fact that all Linux/BSD window managers except WindowMaker copied this glaring flaw is lamentable.

I have room for about 30 applications in my taskbar... it is vertical, remember? So it has plenty room for all windows I have opened. If push comes to shove, it will group windows, but I have yet to see that happen. It is not small... it covers about 10% of the screen size when it is up. Not that you have to use one in KDE, of course... whether you want 0, 1 or 100 panels is, of course, configurable. Empowerment is the watchword. Not sure about new users, they are getting to be a rare species indeed.

This is nicely handled by Expose. One key-press and all applications or windows within a single application are available and recognizable. Combined with keyboard cycling of application groups and windows within application groups it is easy to get where I need to go. Using 20+ windows at a time is easy. Taskbars break down long before this point.

The break down is wrong, as already mentioned. I hate hunting for the right window with expose, and am not a big fan of this feature, but if you want it, it is available on Linux. (Not using KWin yet, though, you will have to go to Beryl). Expose breaks down at about 16 windows, at which point the grid becomes hideously large. The taskbar could probably handle 60 with grouping, and 30 without.

I need at least 4 desktops. 6 is ideal for me.

Virtual desktops are badly needed in OS X. Fortunately they will be in the next release.

Heh. Yeah, next release.

The application menu was on the desktop. Not sure if this is configurable, but that is one horrible idea. That means, to use a menu, you first have to activate the application, and then click the menu.

Sort of. In Windows if an application is minimized or otherwise obscured you will still have to activate or click on it to get to the menu. Same with Gnome, KDE, fluxbox. But this is not really something worth arguing about. Now that I'm used to it, it is quite nice especially if have a lot of windows open for a single application, like terminals.

In KDE, you can have it either way, depending on preferences --- which is how I know I really hate this configuration. In Mac OS X, it's Apple's way or the high way. That you don't think it is worth arguing about is true... Mac OS clearly looses in on this one :)

The emphasis on icons rather than text. Icons are fine for browser buttons and decorations, but it's the text that makes something instantanously recognisable.

I don't know what this means.

It means that the window manager should not rely on icons to convey meaning. Again, it is a personal thing, and again, KDE shines in that it gives you either or and both options.

I never did find the package manager. If I need an application, I want to bring up an app, and search for the apps using keywords, tags or whatever. Then click to install.

Again, nonsensical. There is no need for packages because app installation removal is handled by drag and drop. There are package management systems (fink/ports) if they are wanted/needed.

Where do you drag and drop from? Drag&drop is another interface concept that I do not like much. It has some huge usability flaws, like not being discoverable.

I didn't see how to get buttons for "s

Re:no NO NO!

[mako]

I have room for about 30 applications in my taskbar... it is vertical, remember? So it has plenty room for all windows I have opened. If push comes to shove, it will group windows, but I have yet to see that happen. It is not small... it covers about 10% of the screen size when it is up. Not that you have to use one in KDE, of course... whether you want 0, 1 or 100 panels is, of course, configurable. Empowerment is the watchword. Not sure about new users, they are getting to be a rare species indeed.

Again you have a bunch of applications cramed into a taskbar with no way to identify them. The taskbar is Windows construct that needs to die. Maybe Expose isn't the answer but at least I can get to just about any windows without the mouse, and with two button presses.

The break down is wrong, as already mentioned. I hate hunting for the right window with expose, and am not a big fan of this feature, but if you want it, it is available on Linux. (Not using KWin yet, though, you will have to go to Beryl). Expose breaks down at about 16 windows, at which point the grid becomes hideously large. The taskbar could probably handle 60 with grouping, and 30 without.

Of course Linux has various copies and implmentations of what is on OS X. That's the point though I don't feel like messing with it anymore. In '95 it was alright, now I have other things to do. Expose easily handles 20+ windows on my 13 inch MacBook. Plus I can instantly see what the windows are and I don't have to use a mouse to get to them.

Again this is my main beef with KDGNOME. They simply freakin' copied Windows. I don't like working in Windows. It's anoying. WindowMaker was the high point of the Linux desktop. Fluxbox is pretty nice and has some good features. But KDEGNOME is simply a Windows interface on Linux. I don't see the point.

Where do you drag and drop from? Drag&drop is another interface concept that I do not like much. It has some huge usability flaws, like not being discoverable.

There is nothing to discover. I drag an application from the developer supplied disk image to wherever I want it to live. That's it. None of this fourty seven different package manager crap to deal with.

This is just ridiculous. Where is the multiple desktops on windows? The multiple panels? The Beryl cube? Stay on top? Shading? Max OS X shares much with windows; as does KDE (and Gnome). That is not the point, and in any case a non-issue. What I meant was that Mac OS X is all about "our way or the high way", which is also a mantra in Gnome. I do not like this, nor do a lot of other people. So when someone says that Mac OS X is the one and only, I tend to point out to them that this is not, in fact, the case.

I believe you stated that only base desktop software was acceptable. No add ons or "3rd party apps". Everything you mention on Linux is a third party app. Kwin, Beryl most of that crap is not stable, up and working on an initial install. The very same people that write that crap write crap for OS X that allows for shading and taskbars and what have you. There really is pretty much nothing on the Linux desktop that can't be installed on OS X using the exact same software.

Don't get me wrong. You are more than welcome to use that proprietary, closed, IP infected, limited and locked down desktop, if that is what you want. But I prefer freedown, power and flexibility. Thus, I use KDE, and I am quite happy about it :)

Well, I guess I'm just glad at the end of the day the damn thing works. Besides the choice here is between a proprietary, closed, IP infected, limited and locked desktop or a copy of a proprietary, closed IP infected, limited and locked desktop. And really my time is worth enough not to bother with the later any longer unless I'm getting paid.

Re:no NO NO!

[EsbenMoseHansen]

I have room for about 30 applications in my taskbar... it is vertical, remember? So it has plenty room for all windows I have opened. If push comes to shove, it will group windows, but I have yet to see that happen. It is not small... it covers about 10% of the screen size when it is up. Not that you have to use one in KDE, of course... whether you want 0, 1 or 100 panels is, of course, configurable. Empowerment is the watchword. Not sure about new users, they are getting to be a rare species indeed.

Again you have a bunch of applications cramed into a taskbar with no way to identify them. The taskbar is Windows construct that needs to die. Maybe Expose isn't the answer but at least I can get to just about any windows without the mouse, and with two button presses.

They are not crammed, and clearly labelled with content (like #planeshift for the IRC app) and dash - then the application name, "Konversation" in this case. Also an icon. I can get to any window with one mouse press.

The break down is wrong, as already mentioned. I hate hunting for the right window with expose, and am not a big fan of this feature, but if you want it, it is available on Linux. (Not using KWin yet, though, you will have to go to Beryl). Expose breaks down at about 16 windows, at which point the grid becomes hideously large. The taskbar could probably handle 60 with grouping, and 30 without.

Of course Linux has various copies and implmentations of what is on OS X. That's the point though I don't feel like messing with it anymore. In '95 it was alright, now I have other things to do.

Yes, as you say, linux have most of the features Mac OS X, plus a host more. I don't "mess" with those features, I just spend the 5 minutes it takes to set up the way I like it when I get a new installation.

Expose easily handles 20+ windows on my 13 inch MacBook. Plus I can instantly see what the windows are and I don't have to use a mouse to get to them.

I find the grid confusing and annoying when I got much more than 4x4. Using the mouse is of course only an option in KDE, without going into details about the many ways to not use a mouse and get to the window you want.

Again this is my main beef with KDGNOME. They simply freakin' copied Windows. I don't like working in Windows. It's anoying. WindowMaker was the high point of the Linux desktop. Fluxbox is pretty nice and has some good features. But KDEGNOME is simply a Windows interface on Linux. I don't see the point.

As you yourself pointed out, besides the features that windows offers, KDE adds some features of Mac OS X and some of it's own. I don't like Gnome much, finding it too much like a Mac OS X. But at least it is free&open. So if you don't see the point, you haven't been looking. Not that I am forcing you to, but if you don't know, and don't want to know, could you not spread wrong information about it?

Where do you drag and drop from? Drag&drop is another interface concept that I do not like much. It has some huge usability flaws, like not being discoverable.

There is nothing to discover. I drag an application from the developer supplied disk image to wherever I want it to live. That's it. None of this fourty seven different package manager crap to deal with.

This sounds very windows like. So you have to get a physical medium from the vendor? How quaint. I suppose you can download it from some developers too, if you trust them, and click to install? Sounds exactly like the windows you abhor. Myself, I prefer to have all applications nearly instantly available, without having to have anything but an internet connection. The source is trusted, and the package cryptographically signed by people I know care. It doesn't get much better than this.

This is just ridiculous. Where is the multiple desktops on windows? T

Re:no NO NO!

[mako]

As you yourself pointed out, besides the features that windows offers, KDE adds some features of Mac OS X and some of it's own. I don't like Gnome much, finding it too much like a Mac OS X. But at least it is free&open. So if you don't see the point, you haven't been looking. Not that I am forcing you to, but if you don't know, and don't want to know, could you not spread wrong information about it?

I'm not spreading anything, least of all wrong information. We're both just stating opinions here. We're not dealing with document formats, there is no particular disadvantage to using closed proprietary desktop if you like them. Even if Apple died tomorrow I could pick right up using fluxbox, or Windows, or heaven help me KDEGNOME without missing a beat.

More importantly without OS X there would be no Beryl, or features to copy. They just wouldn't exist. The actual useful, innovative desktops have been ignored by most of the major distributions. Fluxbox, WindowMaker, swept aside for Windows abortions. That is my real point. As a system Linux's strong point is its command line. Those of us who have used Linux forever were ignored for the "we have to make it easy for new users crowd" that gnome and KDE were built for. Built to make the transition from Windows easier, taskbars and the like. I don't care about any of that crap.

This sounds very windows like. So you have to get a physical medium from the vendor? How quaint. I suppose you can download it from some developers too, if you trust them, and click to install? Sounds exactly like the windows you abhor. Myself, I prefer to have all applications nearly instantly available, without having to have anything but an internet connection. The source is trusted, and the package cryptographically signed by people I know care. It doesn't get much better than this.

Are you being ironic? Do you really not know what a disk image is? I'll say again since you seem to keep glossing over the point. Just about all non-kernel dependent software can be compiled and run on OS X. I can run X (and I do for several apps) and KDE (I have parallels if I need Windows) if I desire. The exact same code as availble on Linux.

Beryl will be usable soon enough.

Heh. Any day now I'm sure.

Even if what you said that KDE is a copy of windows were true, which it is not, the "copy" is neither closed, IP infected or limited.

Of course it is. Its feature set is limited to what is released by the closed IP infected versions it copies.

What you use is your own business, but you asked what I dislike about Mac OS X, and I think I have answered in full, and also deflected every single criticism you had.

No, actually I did not ask. I responded to one of your posts is all. As far as deflecting criticism, if my gripes were not still valid I would likely not have them.

Not that KDE is perfect... far from it, there is lots of works to do.... but it is still a darn fine desktop, and for people like me, far superior to Mac OS X. Or windows, for that matter.

No skin off my back. :)

Re:no NO NO!

[jamesshuang]

Yeah, taskbar grouping is definitely one of the first things I turn off. However, barring that (utterly retarded) feature, the taskbar is by far the most intuitive task indicator possible. Again, I'm a linux person anyways, so having multiple desktops are also necessary for completely fluid work. Grouping a set of tasks into a desktop greatly reduces the number of buttons on the taskbar. However, desktop icons and the taskbar still indicates what exactly is running at a glance (without the need to press a button). For example, desktop 1 is my browser desktop, so I can immediately see what windows I have open. IMs are grouped into tabs already - untabbed clients are for uncivilized people ;) .

My experience with 6.10

[Matt Edd]

I decided to try Ubuntu (my first unix experience) two days ago. I spent two days trying to get it to use a proper aspect ratio for my main monitor and to use my second monitor as anything but a clone of the first monitor. All I could do was the former. I may go back to it someday to play but I just spent the evening learning how to get grub to boot into windows automatically and to hide the grub menu. Granted there may be an easy solution to all unix problems but they are not intuitive. I love (and use) many open source programs but until I have 9-5 job, I don't have the time to learn even Ubuntu.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

decided to try Ubuntu (my first unix experience) two days ago. I spent two days trying to get it to use a proper aspect ratio for my main monitor and to use my second monitor as anything but a clone of the first monitor.

I'm presuming you have an ATI or nvidia card. I've come across this bug on my laptop also. I'm not sure what the linux community can do about software they have absolutely no control over.

I know this advice is too late now, but next time you make a hardware purchasing decision, I suggest investing your money in video hardware from a company that supports linux instead of a company that provides buggy, incomplete closed source drivers.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[WaZiX]

Yeah Dual Monitors are annoying, it's really quite easy actually (just editing a file), but lets say I would want to make a presentation, I'm yet to find a way to connect my laptop on the fly to an external monitor/projector.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[hugzz]

I decided to try Ubuntu (my first unix experience) two days ago. I spent two days trying to get it to use a proper aspect ratio for my main monitor and to use my second monitor as anything but a clone of the first monitor. All I could do was the former.

But do you think you'd be able to do that in two days if you had never used windows before in your life? It's a pretty uneven playing field that you're judging it on.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[freeweed]

Besides the fact that this has nothing, I repeat NOTHING to do with Linux at all.

My laptop runs Windows XP and ATI's drivers work for shit with multi-monitor support. I can spend a lot more than 2 days trying to make it work, and it will randomly stop working months later without cause.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[dvice_null]

I've used Windows since version 2.x so I'm no newbie with Windows nor computers in general. Recently I tried installing Windows 2000 and Windows XP on the same disk with Linux. And even I spent about 3 days on that, I failed to install either of them. The best the Windows could do was to corrupt the partition table complitely (which I was luckily able to save from Linux live-cd). You spent 2 days and managed to get it installed, and yet you claim it is the Linux which is hard to use?

But you are absolutely right. The configuration could be more easy for new users and I think that every new version of Ubuntu has improved this a little. So I suggest that you give it another try when the next version is released and perhaps even give it a little more time than 2 days. I would recommend 2 weeks, which seems to be enough for Windows-users to learn the benefits of using Linux.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

"I'm presuming you are trying to use AC or DC electricity with your linux computer.

Your analogy breaks down even quicker than most /. analogies.

AC & DC are all you have.

nvidia & ati are not. There's intel & unichrome chipsets out there. Not great for gaming, but neither's linux.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[robinvanleeuwen]

If you have an ATI graphics card read my posts at: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=222310&cid=180 13600 and

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=222310&cid=180 10252.

i got it working with ati and beryl. just required a bit of work, once you get the hang of it it's a 15 minute job.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[INowRegretThesePosts]

nvidia & ati are not. There's intel & unichrome chipsets out there. Not great for gaming, but neither's linux. Nowadays there are good native games for Linux, such as America's Army, the Dooms, the Quakes, etc.
Also, wine runs a lot of games. Very complex monsters such as World of Warcraft run fine on wine.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Have you asked for help in the Ubuntu forums? They are very helpful and responsive. Don't hesitate.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[shmlco]

"I suggest investing your money in video hardware from a company that supports linux instead of a company that provides buggy, incomplete closed source drivers."

Nothing like engaging in a bout of finger-pointing to absolve oneself of all responsibility. Unfortunately, saying "Hey, it's not MY fault" does little to solve the problem.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[colonslashslash]

I didn't even bother attempting this with Ubuntu (6.06) on my laptop. I think I spent about 2 days straight trying to get my laptop to see external monitors / TV out with the ATI drivers in Windows XP. Never really got anywhere, aside from a brief moment where it kindly gave me a flickering piss-poor resolution output in greyscale, before crashing the display properties dialog.

I'm going to try switching my laptop over to Ubuntu again when Fiesty is released, all I need is the Wifi chipset to work this time, and I'm set - everything else was fine last time.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Lorkki]

Something comes to my mind about pots and kettles. I'm interested in hearing what your alternative course of action would be, seeing as the vendors have made their current stances quite crystal-clear.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Mark McGann]

For what it's worth my desktop at work is running Gentoo Linux with two monitors that work flawlessly. It does it better than either windows or MACOSX, which both work well but occasionally open a window across both monitors. Both monitors are running the same resolution, but are not clones obviously. The videocard is an nvidia GeForce, probably a 4 or 5 series, and I'm using the nvidia drivers with hardware acceleration.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[FauxPasIII]

> Having ruled out ATI and Nvidia, that would be who, exactly?

Intel.

http://intellinuxgraphics.org/

Re:My experience with 6.10

[evilviper]

There's intel & unichrome chipsets out there.

The Unichrome drivers are buggy as hell. No idea about Intel's work, since I don't have an Intel board, and certainly wouldn't buy one just to get a video chipset anyhow. If Intel made PCI Express cards, then maybe.

Additionally, I wouldn't recommend integrated chipsets to anyone. Even on 2D, integrated video will drag your computer down with it. With 3D, you've got to be some sort of masochist.

I'd expect to see better performance from an old ATI Radeon card, with the open source Mesa DRI drivers, than a brand new Intel/Via video chip.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Provocateur]

Guys, running a second monitor leans toward a hardcore user and not for the faint of heart. But let me give you this, this http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=22117 4 page on the forums on Ubuntu has the most advice there is, whether it's nVidia or ATI (even got span to run on Mandrake!), whether its spanning or xinerama, BigDesktop, or clone.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[xeoron]

Try using xvidtune to configure your monitor settings directly. I was having the same problems you had when I got a new LCD and this was the only thing worked.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[miro f]

actually if you have an nvidia card the latest drivers make setting up dual monitors a breeze, just within the configurator (nvidia-xconfig) you can set your monitors however you wish.

For ATi users, no idea.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Master of Transhuman]

"learning how to get grub to boot into windows automatically and to hide the grub menu."

Say what?

Try doing the same thing in Windows if you want to see lack of intuitive...let alone the ability to do it at all.

This gets me. Somebody installs Linux, then tries to make it look like Windows by booting into Windows automatically and hiding the boot menu - which is the point of dual-booting.

All because they don't want to hit the down arrow key at boot time and press enter...

Geez, it's a crying shame that somebody has to log in at a network prompt instead of just clicking on the "Welcome" screen...

That's another one...

Then they want dual monitors set up by default perfectly... One of my current clients has a dual monitor setup. I had to futz around with it for half an hour in Windows to get it to display the DESKTOP on the SAME monitor as the goddam system panel...Windows says arrange your monitors on the setup dialog the way they are physically...They WERE...Still didn't work...

Jesus...

There's this clown in alt.comp.freeware who has nothing better to do with his life than install one Linux distro after another on his weird-ass hardware with LS-120 drives, and SCSI hard drives manufactured by God knows who, and all this other custom non-standard crap. And then he comes on ACF and bitches constantly about how nothing works, and how Linux will never be ready for ANYBODY to use until his shit works...

Meanwhile, at LEAST TWENTY-FIVE MILLION people are using Linux on the desktop, if the stats from ten years ago about NINE MILLION people using Linux were at all accurate.

So nobody gives a shit if nine hundred million are using Windows vs twenty-five million on Linux.

Linux WORKS for twenty-five million people.

Does it work perfectly? NO! Can it stand to get major changes? SURE! Are the distros fucking up? YOU BET!

Doesn't mean it doesn't WORK.

I have been running one version of Linux or another for the last year and a half or two years on my nice four-year-old vanilla white box desktop with no significant problems at all (other than some stupidities from Kubuntu that are easily equaled by the stupidities I see on my Windows XP side of the same box.)

Not intuitive, my ass. That has utterly NOTHING to do with it. Linux is no more and no less "intuitive" than Windows XP. I had to learn both Windows and Linux from scratch six years ago. And I'm 58 years old. I had no more trouble learning either of them, nor have I ever seen any significant difference in general usability. NEITHER are the least bit "intuitive". I have little experience on the Mac, but I suspect even the Mac is not all THAT "intuitive".

LEARNING is NOT "intuition".

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Chandon Seldon]

Linux works *perfectly* if you can just manage the simple task of *using supported hardware*. No one complains that Windows won't install on a Sparcstation, or that Mac OS X won't install on a Dell, but you feel that your Broadcom wireless card should work automatically on Ubuntu.

Sorry, it doesn't. You might be able to get it to work through some sort of ridiculous unsupported hack like ndiswrapper. That's an advantage that Linux has - it's probably possible to get anything to work - but you're off in unsupported-land with the people running OS X on their Dells; if it breaks you get to keep both pieces.

In the end, if you want it to work, choose supported hardware. The hardware you use is your choice, and Linux supports enough hardware that it's not hard to choose hardware that will just work.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[yuna49]

Linux works *perfectly* if you can just manage the simple task of *using supported hardware*.

No, it doesn't. I just bought a Dell Inspiron 640m because it came with Intel 945GM graphics. I made sure I had an Intel 3945 wireless card installed as well. Both of these devices are "supported" hardware, yet neither of them worked out of the box. I could fix the wireless issues since I know what I'm doing, but a novice user would be flummoxed.

I'm still unable to get accelerated graphics to work on the 945GM platform. If you ask Intel for the drivers you get pointed to a site that requires you to download the driver source using git and build it yourself. The "intel" driver that's included with Fedora doesn't work correctly either. The older i810 driver generates memory allocation errors if you try to play a video. So I'm stuck with the generic "vesa" driver which can't decode H.264-encoded video at acceptable speeds. None of these were problems with the Vista installation before I ripped it out.

Oh, and I still have to find and install the 915resolution hack to drive the screen at 1200x800 or other wide-screen resolutions. Why isn't that supported at installation? And, I had to submit a bug to the Fedora developers because the screen brightness controls aren't supported either. That issue is still unresolved.

I've been using Linux for over a decade. I'm using "supported" hardware that I chose for this reason. My "out-of-box" experience is still poor. (Oh, and Ubuntu users have similar problems to mine; it's not just a Fedora issue.) Just to see if things had improved, I tried the FC7 beta 2 live-CD version of Fedora. It won't install graphics at all; I get dumped to the prompt.

If I was using some obscure manufacturer's machine, I might be less unhappy. But if Linux distributors want to get their product used, they need to make sure it works out-of-the-box on Dells. If it were up to me, I wouldn't release a distro until I made sure it installed cleanly on all the major Dell laptop and desktop products currently in release. (I'd include HP, and perhaps Gateway, in this list as well.) This might be a financial challenge for smaller distros, but certainly not for companies like RedHat or Canonical. Yes, I know that Dell changes components often, but the default machines have Intel everything. Given that Intel supposedly distributes open-source Linux drivers for all its hardware these days, Linux distros need to install cleanly on plain-vanilla Intel-based machines.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Burz]

Granted there may be an easy solution to all unix problems but they are not intuitive.

They aren't intuitive because they were built with an anti-GUI mindset. Even Xorg itself is anti-GUI, as the stupid thing doesn't know how to fall back to a framebuffer with standard res (like XGA) and present a configuration GUI to the user. Those 'icky' details are left for the distro people work out, and 80% of them just leave it to the user to handle manually while another 10% handle it badly.

GUIs must be employed extensively on PCs to make controls for commonly-used features discoverable. Otherwise, you end up with oxymoronic situations where a GUI like Xorg is useful mainly to CLI experts.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Chandon Seldon]

If you are using hardware that should be supported and having problems, that's a bug. You should report it, and it will get fixed.

As for

But if Linux distributors want to get their product used, they need to make sure it works out-of-the-box on Dells.

It *should* work out of the box on Dells, except for "Dell Wireless" - which is illegal to provide out of the box support for because it is based on a Broadcom chipset. If you can manage to click "Intel Wireless" when you buy your Dell, there's no reason it shouldn't work.

More relevantly though... operating systems should really come pre-installed. Dell desktops *are* off-brand for Linux, because Dell doesn't support Linux on them. If you buy from someone like http://www.system76.com/ everything will Just Work, or at least Just Work better than Windows does.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[yuna49]

I've already reported on one bug and will probably file a few more reports in the weeks ahead.

As I said, I specifically ordered the Intel 3945 wireless (and 945GM video), but it would not install out of the box. I had to track down the drivers from Intel and other sites. Our last laptop had a 2200 series Intel wireless card which wouldn't install out of the box either because the firmware couldn't be redistributed. As for the video, I don't call offering a site where someone has to download source from a repository and compile the driver particularly friendly to non-technical users. Intel suggests getting a binary version from the distro maintainers, but a search of Linux user forums suggests that finding such a beast has not proved easy for people using a wide range of distros.

While it would be nice to live in a world where mainstream vendors offer pre-installed Linux, and while there might be system manufacturers who offer that alternative, the vast majority of potential Linux users are buying preconfigured systems from major manufacturers. If Linux won't install cleanly on those systems, they won't be trying Linux again any time soon.

As I also said, I'm not a Linux newbie, and I encourage people to consider it as an alternative to Windows all the time. I've installed many different distros on many different systems over the years. Most of the time it's gone smoothly, but sometimes it does not. It's always been a lot easier to install Linux in a server setting where you don't care about video, wireless, etc., than it is to install on a modern workstation where all those things need to work from the beginning. I understand the constraints that proprietary code, patented algorithms, and arcane hardware can impose. All I'm saying is that one can select supposedly "supported" hardware configurations that neverthless pose installation problems for many distros.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Chandon Seldon]

Intel suggests getting a binary version from the distro maintainers, but a search of Linux user forums suggests that finding such a beast has not proved easy for people using a wide range of distros.

My guess is that this is your problem. It's great that you have the option of using whatever distro you want, but not every distro will provide the same level of user experience. Ubuntu provides binary blobs for wireless drivers. Other distros like Fedora do not. For Fedora, an Intel wireless card isn't supported hardware.

My suggestion: Use Ubuntu, it works. If that's too hard, use Linspire. But don't complain when the distro you chose doesn't work with the hardware you chose.

Re:My experience with 6.10

[yuna49]

You mean, easy like this?

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Chandon Seldon]

So, what you're saying is that - at worst - Ubuntu is as bad as Microsoft Windows. In order to fully use recently-released supported hardware, you need to download a driver package from the manufacturer and install it.

If I were MS, I would be running scared

[rolfwind]

It's amazing how, since Ubuntu hit the scene, that the Linux Desktop has just dramatically improved. Before Ubuntu, things were meandering along without much focus it seems, with the best out of the box experience being Knoppix, which unfortunately was too complicated for the average user to install (being focused as it was as a Live CD).

It seems now that every six months brings as more improvements as Vista has to XP. And for most users, I would consider the Linux desktop as "here", if not for some applications which have little to do with the distro itself but have me asking - when are developers going to step in and provide ports or at least make sure they run fine in Wine without much modification? Do we Linux users have to signal to them that we are more than willing to pay for some things? Will Click-n-Run, when ported to Ubuntu later this year, spur this on? Will CnR maybe bring up a new crop of Linux developers servicing the Linux community with specific pay-for apps in the vacuum of development houses staying loyal to MS? Not every App lends itself to having the developer do support contracts afterall.

It's frustrating to be ignored, I already "converted" 3 people to Ubuntu this year - but these are types who simply want to browse the web and one had their MS OS trashed by malware and wanted something secure but convenient (FYI I don't delete Windows, just shrink the partition if they ever need it). But these are side converts, it really doesn't matter what OS they use - they won't ever go out and buy software - so for all intents and purposes the development houses can ignore them.

Re:If I were MS, I would be running scared

[Raenex]

The killer is device support, not applications. There are a lot of people who just want to browse the web, use email, etc. They also want to go to the store, buy a new device, and have it work. Almost all devices come with software to make it work for Windows. It's a crapshoot for Linux. I use Linux, but sadly there's no way I'd recommend it to somebody else.

Re:If I were MS, I would be running scared

[Chandon Seldon]

Ubuntu isn't the only solid desktop Linux distribution. It wasn't even the first. SuSE Linux has always been pretty nice, as has Mandriva, as has Knoppix. Even Linspire isn't that bad.

Ubuntu has two things that make it unique: First, it's a full featured Debian derivative that's completely usable for a novice without sacrificing the power or flavor of Debian like Linspire does. Second, it's a commercially supported distro that costs $0. All of the pieces have been there for a while, but it took Ubuntu to put them together.

Re:If I were MS, I would be running scared

[Chandon Seldon]

USB devices mostly Just Work under Linux. Device support for Cameras, Scanners, and Printers is so good that it's reasonably safe to go to the store, buy a random device, and expect it to work out of the box. In the rare case where something doesn't work (mostly cheap printers), you can return the thing and buy a different brand, and that'll work.

Not a nice middle-ground

[Burz]

Ubuntu is still its own OS (as are the other distros): See Ian Murdoch essay.

As such, no platform exists for PC software vendors to target.

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[kripkenstein]

Ubuntu is still its own OS (as are the other distros): See Ian Murdoch essay.

As such, no platform exists for PC software vendors to target.

The Ian Murdoch essay focuses on C/C++, which is where the main problem lies. If one develops in the 'bytecode' family of languages/environments - Java, Python, C# - then porting between Linux distros is actually quite simple, in my experience at least. Using a cross-platform GUI toolkit - WxWidgets, GTK+, Qt - can even allow porting to Windows and others. For example, look at the (old) 'official' Bittorrent client: written in Python and WxWidgets, it works on all OSes I am familiar with, no hassle at all.

As more development is done in bytecode languages, this problem is getting smaller and smaller. However, it does exist, I agree, and work needs to be done to improve it in the meanwhile (and work is being done, albeit slowly).

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[paving-slab]

Actually, Ubuntu is not its own OS.

It is the same GNU/Linux as other distributions, but configured differently.

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[AusIV]

no platform exists for PC software vendors to target.

I disagree. I'm an Ubuntu user, and ever piece of software on my computer has been installed either from repositories or through programs like Automatix. Using repositories, I've installed Sun's Java 5, both the jre and the jdk, Adobe Reader and Flash. Using Automatix, I installed Google's Picasa and Google Earth. I also have a plethora of open source programs that weren't written with Ubuntu's repositories in mind. All Sun, Adobe, Google, or OS vendors provided were binaries or source code and dependency lists, and people with interest in having them available for Ubuntu made them easy to install.

With Ubuntu Feisty, Linspire's Click-N-Run will provide a platform for charging users for software, and the CNR software is being opened up to be ported to other Linux distributions.

Free (as in beer) software installation on Linux is easy, and vendors don't have to jump through hoops to make their program available on every distribution - the distributions will do that for them. Proprietary software is also becoming more practical with the availability of things like CNR.

Linux will never have a unified distribution, because it's too many different things to different people, but software installation is quickly improving. The ease of use of repositories, particularly with the upcoming availability of CNR, makes installing software on Ubuntu more consistent than the variety of executables available on Windows.

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[Master of Transhuman]

BINGO!

And configured badly because they don't have the manpower to do adequate testing or handle bugs when they arise.

To be fair, Ubuntu is a comparatively "new" distro, compared to SUSE, Red Hat and Mandriva.

Maybe in five years they'll be at the point where the more mature distros are - i.e., usable out of the box.

But they aren't there yet - and their rapid rise has in my opinion damaged the chances for Linux on the desktop as too many newbies are being recommended to use it while the distro is NOT ready for total newbies YET.

I run Kubuntu on my vanilla white box four-year-old desktop with no add-on hardware, and it works fine. ANY vanilla Linux would work fine on my box. Which is why I say Linux IS ready for the corporate desktop because corporate desktops tend to be vanilla desktops. (Corporate laptops are another matter.)

Add in a laptop with WiFi, custom hardware, add-on consumer peripherals like cameras, etc. - and Ubuntu hasn't a clue. Even the mature distros have trouble with the newest hardware. A newbie distro like Ubuntu isn't going to be good enough for the naive user simply because they CANNOT have the manpower to test every device out there.

The naive users need to try a MATURE distro like Mandriva instead of (X)buntu, in my opinion.

And (X)buntu needs to tone down its hype to match the expectations of the users.

Being the most POPULAR distro does NOT mean that it's the BEST distro - any more than Windows being a monopoly means it's the best OS.

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[Burz]

Bytecode languages are just as much a problem, because the underlying problem that Ian describes is the lack of a known platform. If the user and the user-targetting ISV can't keep track of what libraries, interpreters and runtime environments come standard on a Linux-user's machine, then you can't easily package/sell/shop for software as "Linux compatible".

Expecting end-users to walk around with a list of high-level languages and runtime environments supported by their OS, just so they can purchase software is just stupid. Its really no better than asking them to remember a list of shared libraries. Just knowing the OS should be enough because that is its role.

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[Burz]

Please read the essay by Ian Murdoch that I linked to above. Personal computing simply does not fit with the practice of channeling all possible software options through one centralized source.

Repositories are a bandaid that IMO have now become the problem.

Either define a common platform that includes core GUI and audio functionality, or keep being ignored on the desktop.

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[kripkenstein]

In my opinion, the bytecode languages are doing more to solve the underlying problem than you indicate. I'll try to explain why I believe so. There are two major reasons.

1. Python is pretty ubiquitous on Linux. Even if it isn't installed by default, it is a short install away, on every distro I've even used at least. Certainly on Debian (and derivatives), Red Hat and SuSE - which is quite a big enough platform to target. For Windows, Python is a short download and install away as well. I think we can safely assume that Python and (once completely FOSS) Java are safe platforms to develop for in that respect (less sure about .Net/Mono).

2. Python (for example) is quite a rich environment. Develop for Python 2.5, and you have Sqlite built in. You can use it no matter what underlying OS you are on. While 'just a language' the bytecode languages have standard libraries that are starting to look more like small operating systems. And that is good, in that they abstract away the OS details. This leads to not having to worry about what packages are installed; if you are writing for Python, you know with certainty that whatever is in the Python specification is available to you.

Therefore, I think that developing for a bytecode language platform - as opposed to an OS - is the current direction in which things are going.

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[Burz]

Python is a nice language, I agree.

However it doesn't come standard with a GUI toolkit. Even Java is closer to providing a desktop platform.

Re:Not a nice middle-ground

[kripkenstein]

Well, Python has Tkinter (an interface to the TK GUI toolkit) as standard. But this isn't necessarily the best solution. I agree with you that Java may in fact be more ahead in that respect.

If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[Alex Zepeda]

Case in point, the 3dfx xorg driver. Worked fine in Dapper. Broken in Edgy. A two line patch to add the proper prototype for a function fixes the problem in Edgy. Bug report is closed because it's been fixed in Feisty.

Or how about the USB hot plug stuff missing a bunch of digital camera IDs? Pretty well documented, but nope. Not fixed in Edgy. As a result, using a digital camera with Ubuntu requires lots of digging.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[pwizard2]

I have an older model digital camera (Fujifilm finepix a210) and it works fine in [k]ubuntu, as it gets treated like any other flash drive or removable storage device when I plug it in with a usb cable.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[LingNoi]

Broken in Edgy.

I know your angry. I have a problem also with my Edgy Ubuntu laptop where I have to have wireless on to boot otherwise the whole thing freezes on boot (The reason for this bug is because of a closed source Intel wireless driver, not open source). This has also been fixed in Feisty but not Edgy.

BUT

Edgy is a Beta product and it is said many, many times on the Ubuntu website that if you want a stable version of Ubuntu to use Dapper Drake LTS (version 6.10... LTS=Long Term Support). I know its not what you want to hear, sorry and I hope you have better luck in the future. :D

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[Alex Zepeda]

I've got a Fuji F30 (which does not have a mass storage mode). I had to manually add some lines to /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libgphoto2.rules to get the permissions set properly. Said camera worked just fine with Dapper. Of course the rules file is not empty in Edgy, but it's certainly missing some well known USB IDs.

See also the bug report: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gphoto2/+bug/ 6602

These are pretty stupid regressions to be making, if only because they're so trivial to fix to boot. I certainly don't hold out a lot of hope for Feisty.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[Alex Zepeda]

Edgy hasn't been beta for a while. At least not according to ubuntu.com. This does not look like a beta to me. That said, I don't really care if it's beta or not. It's not that bugs are being ignored, it's that they're being dismissed for being non-issues.

I've yet to deal with an Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubuntu install that didn't require some serious fiddling. I'm disappointed, but not too much, that I couldn't boot a 6.10 release CD on my machine. That I could not apt-get and download a fixed version (considering that the fix is about as trivial as they come) makes me think twice about my choice of distributions.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[Alex Zepeda]

Also,

6.06 (Dapper Drake) is the long term support (3-5 years support).

6.10 (Edgy Eft) is a final release, but supposed to have, at most, 18 months of support.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[LingNoi]

Really? What bugs are non-issues? Tell me and I will look into it for you and report them to the bug tracker.

I have had problems with Dapper Drake and Edgy because I am using a laptop and every bug I have reported has been taken seriously. Please tell me so I can look into it for you.

I hope you will give Ubuntu another go when the next Long Term Support release comes out. :D

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[freeweed]

He's got a point though - Dapper is supposed to be the big "supported for years" release. My new Powershot A710IS is supported by libgphoto, yet I had to hunt around for a while to get the damn thing working in Dapper as the version available from the repositories is ANCIENT. Add dozens of newer camera models and it's a mess. You do know that not all cameras work as a mass storage device, right?

Thankfully at least I didn't have to compile from source, which is what one of the howtos suggested. Hooray for destroying package management!

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[N7DR]

He's got a point though - Dapper is supposed to be the big "supported for years" release.

This "Long Term Support" thing is almost universally misunderstood by users. I agree that any normal person interprets "LTS" to mean that the distro (dapper) will be kept up to date. But that's not what it means :-( As has been explained several times (and not doubt will be explained many more) on various ubuntu reflectors and fora, Canonical says that "LTS" means that they will continue to provide security patches for a long time, not that they will update any apps.

They should make this much clearer than they do, because the natural interpretation is the one you suggest, not theirs. Someone on one reflector defines "LTS" to mean "Long Term Stagnation", which does unfortunately seem to be a defensible expansion of the term. It's not that simply applying security patches is bad or evil or wrong -- it's just not what the typical user expects "Long Term Support" to mean.

FWIW, I have some hopes that cnr.com will fix this, IMO one of the biggest failings of Linux distros: the inability to keep current with applications without being forced quite quickly to update the entire distro to the most recent version.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[linguizic]

I have had problems with Dapper Drake and Edgy because I am using a laptop and every bug I have reported has been taken seriously.

I have been reporting bugs whenever I run across them in every distro I've used, and only Ubuntu consistently follows up on the bugs. I used RHEL for many years and never got the kind of attention paid to the bug issues that I had the way Ubuntu does.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[BiggerIsBetter]

Canonical says that "LTS" means that they will continue to provide security patches for a long time, not that they will update any apps.

So, just to clarify, LTS means only security patches, not non-security bug patches? While I agree that a line muct be drawn somewhere, incomplete PCI lists and Xorg bugs hardly seem like adding or upgrading application features.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[Alex Zepeda]

Especially when these bugs are regressions.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[Alex Zepeda]

https://launchpad.net/bugs/89581

What is it about Ubunto

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it really. I use linux for quite some time. Occasionally I look around to see what suits me best. And yes we have come a long way.

Ubunto is...nice. I mean, there is nothing wrong with it (I even have it installed on one of my PPC machines). But lately it seems like every one and his mum is using it (or trying to). But it is neither the most powerful nor the most userfriendly distro out there. What is it that makes people want to use Ubuntu.

It is also not true that it just "works". As depending on your hardware each distro can have problems. And with respect to easy system installation or configuration Ubuntu is much much worse that for example SUSE or especially Mandriva (the config tools are sometimes a bit ugly, but they are OSS and the best ones I have seen).

So what is it about Ubuntu that makes ppl like it so much?

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[gutu]

It's the best packaged product for average user.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a noob. I know little to nothing about Linux and just enough to be dangerous with Windows. I have tried several distros over the last 12 or 15 years and Ubuntu was the first time ever that everything worked, including my wireless card. Overall I found it fairly easy to navigate and wouldn't think anyone fairly proficient in an MS environment would have a lot of trouble figuring out how to use it.

I have gotten things running under other distros as well but Ubuntu's was the easiest I've ever encountered. If I can avoid having to manually do things from a command prompt I prefer not to and Ubuntu made that possible. I realize a lot of /.'ers live for the command prompt (or claim to) but the pool of potential converts consists of users who expect to click something and be on their merry way. It wouldn't hurt if games (games not featuring penguins) worked better. Seems a bit of a catch 22 when games and apps aren't often ported to Linux due to lack of demand, and that lack of commercial software might be a deciding factor for would be users.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[apathy maybe]

Based on Debian (which didn't want to detect my HD when installing from a CD, and went I "debootstrapped" it from Knoppix also had problems, one of which was not detecting my Intel Wireless). GNOME (by far the best GUI I have ever used, and it keeps getting better, I like the MacOS 10 one, but GNOME is better). Being based on Debian it has a really nice easy way to install software. Everything integrates really nicely (install WINE, can run Windows programs straight away, install Java, can use Java applets now). Evolution integrates with the clock!

GNOME and APT are the main reasons, but it can detect my wireless (using admittedly, the non-free Intel drivers) and is really fucking easy to use.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[Archtech]

Perhaps not entirely technical reasons. Why did Java take off at such tremendous speed and become so preeminent, when there are so many good languages out there? It's partly a matter of timing, but largely a question of mass psychology. For some reason, certain memes go howling into overdrive and enjoy a positive feedback loop that boosts their growth into the stratosphere.

When you find out exactly why these things happen, you can become the world's richest individual more or less overnight.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[howlingmadhowie]

interestingly, one of my pupils is at quite a posh school here in germany. he told me that *everybody* (whatever that may mean) is now using ubuntu, because windows is boring. i'm not sure this is the best reason to change.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[Doctor Crumb]

I use Kubuntu, and I like it because:
a) it Just Works for my hardware. You may have troubles, but it seems most people don't.
b) it's usable. They've put a lot of work into making sure settings/programs are where a user expects them, and that things are doable with a GUI.
c) frequent updates/upgrades. I like running the latest versions of things, and I know that there's even more updates coming in 6 months.
d) active innovation. it's a distro that is willing to rewrite the entire bootup sequence if it'll improve the user experience.
e) pragmatism about closed-source. Ubuntu admits that people sometimes need closed-source drivers/software, and makes it easy to get/install.
f) excellent community/support/documentation. If I have a problem, I can find a fix.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[wile_e_wonka]

For me, SUSE did not "just work" and Ubuntu did.

I actually first used Linux fairly recently with Ubuntu 5.10 (I have an external hard drive with extra space, so I installed it on there), then decided to try switching to SUSE. I thought it was cool for about two days (though, not much cooler than Ubuntu--I was up to 6.06 when I made the switch to SUSE--the only things cooler about SUSE were Slab and Compiz) until the startup stopped recognizing my hard drive because of a weird tendency my hard drive has to switch from sda to sdb at random. That's easy to fix in GRUB, so I did so, but SUSE's startup runs fsck on the designated install disk every time--sda in my case--when it couldn't find sda to run fsck on it, it refused to start. I could find no way to solve this. Whereas, with Ubuntu, this was not a problem.

So, I know, you're thinking, "SUSE just didn't work for you because your hard drive is wacked." But hey--isn't it nice that Ubuntu works even though my hard drive is wacked?

So, to finish the story, when I switched back to Ubuntu, I installed 6.10, which runs Compiz quite easily, and also has slab available. So I'm converted back to Ubuntu.

NOTE: if anyone has any idea why my USB hard drive switches between sda and sdb, I would love to hear.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[Billly Gates]

Ubuntu is hot because its the most easiest and simplist distro to use.

For the majority of users it is the first distro that just works though, I know you said its not and I have seen comments here stating its not 100% ready for all hardware.

For me its highly integrated and very well thought of with things like clicking on a .deb in firefox will load a nice .deb installer is just an example.

Apt-get just works and I have seen alot of problems with beta level software packages in other distros that should not have been included in the portage, yum or some .bin files. Ubuntu seems stable for once.

Its hardware autodection just works too on all my computers and even the printer worked by cups via plug and play! I have had anything like this.

My el-cheapo laptop under a vinalla windowsXP service pack2 cd has issues and I need to copy all the drivers to a cd to make it work properly. Ubuntu runs flawless and detects everything.

Anyway this is why many of us love it and view it ahead of the competition.

Now we need to work on other hardware to make sure its more flawless.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[marcosdumay]

"Why did Java take off at such tremendous speed and become so preeminent, when there are so many good languages out there?"

Because it is very hard to write bad code on it.

Wait a few years, and you get a (the only one today) maintanable codebase... And growing functionality (when everything else is stagnant)... And people start to respect the language.

Re:What is it about Ubunto

[Master of Transhuman]

No, it is not.

It is not a mature distro. A mature distro is needed for the average user.

Note: I did NOT say that EVERY mature distro is for the average user. Fedora definitely is not.

(X)buntu has too many problems with testing and bug resolution to be recommended to newbie users.

Re:But has it matured quickly enough?

[Simon Garlick]

I immediately burned an Ubuntu preview ISO and installed it on my shiny new DELL Inspiron 640m. There was a problem though and X11 would crash on load -- and the graphical safe mode would not work either (confirmed bug). The 915resolution hack was not needed for my Intel graphics card, but I needed to have more information for my laptop's LCD. By manually entering the vertical and horizontal sync in the xorg.conf file it fixed the problem for my 1440x900 screen and I was able to load the LiveCD and finally install Feisty on the hard drive.

Installation was a breeze, very fast and easy to go by, although the "advanced" button that let's you configure where the bootloader should be installed it could use some friendlier "names" rather than just (hd0,0).

OMG, it's so simple, my grandmother could do it!

Re:But has it matured quickly enough?

[Timesprout]

Ah another irritation, X11 crashes. Plugging my very expensive LCD with higher res capability into my very expensive laptop used to cause problems which was quite annoying. You spend all this money on hardware and then cant take advantage of it without pissing about. And of course we all like pissing about with sync settings after reading the helpful warning that doing so can irreperably damage your monitor.

my experiences on a laptop

[squidinkcalligraphy]

I got an IBM r52 recently; I tried installing XP on it - initially with the supposed foolproof system restore image, then from scratch, and three or four hours later, still had no usable system. The drivers just wouldn't install or download and I couldn't find a way to transport them from my other machine. Then I put an ubuntu 6.10 disc in, and bout half an hour later, without little to no interaction, had a perfectly working system. Even wifi worked out of the box. (WPA authentication took a little bit more digging, but was surprisingly easy once I found the package to use).

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Hmmmmn, its anecdotes such as this one that make me wonder if windows will ever be ready for the desktop.

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[IchBinEinPenguin]

The utter PITA that is an XP install on modern hardware is mostly attributable to Microsoft's refusal to re-issue the XP install CD with an updated driver database (*).
This, of course, it to ensure that there's at least one good reason to upgrade to Vista.

(*) Yes, I know drivers can be slipstreamed, but why should we have to do that?

OK... enough trolling for one day....

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[Nimey]

I take it you don't have a USB stick and your other machine doesn't have a CD burner. Those are the trivial ways to transport drivers between machines.

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[squidinkcalligraphy]

True; though the first option is useless if the USB ports aren't working due to lack of a driver. But the greater problem was the problems in installing the drivers (yes, I did try burning them to CD eventually) - they just refused to install. This was due to IBMs driver install system requiring .NET framework 2, while XP ships with version 1. No useful error message or anything to notify the user of this...

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[Civil_Disobedient]

Funny, I've got an IBM Thinkpad R51, and I've had the same experience. It was nearly flawless. The only tricky part was configuring the wireless support, which was actually incredibly easy once I read that I should use the Gnome Wireless Network Manager applet. Built-in support for WPA/WPA2 + VPN. Easy as Windows.

I was even able to get Beryl working, since the built-in graphics hardware is Intel. It's old as hell, but it's Intel (open-source drivers), so now I've got a desktop that rivals Windows Vista's "Aero," running on laptop hardware that's five years old (Pentium 1.5 Ghz).

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[Master of Transhuman]

Yeah, the GNOME Wireless Network Manager works.

Unfortunately, Kubuntu ships with the Wireless Assistant - which is a POS that does NOT work well with WEP among other defects, let alone WPA.

Also Kubuntu ships a firmware for a specific wireless card which is buggy and does not work as well as the EARLIER firmware for the card - which again proves that nobody tested the latest firmware.

Which is my point.

Nobody tested the Wireless Assistant with WEP - or cared if it failed the tests, apparently. Nobody tested the latest firmware. Nobody tested the Kubuntu 6.06 CD installer to see if it would exit the mount point change screen - which means the entire install process wasn't tested AT ALL.

Nobody tests squat on (X)buntu because they don't have the manpower.

This is why (X)buntu is not suitable for new Linux users. It is not mature enough.

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[EvilRyry]

Because Vista has such a wide database of drivers on its install CD... (Smell the sarcasm?)

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[Civil_Disobedient]

Unfortunately, Kubuntu ships with the Wireless Assistant - which is a POS that does NOT work well with WEP among other defects, let alone WPA.

First I thought, "wait, Xubuntu doesn't ship with any wireless apps" until I remembered the Wireless Assistant. Good god, what in the hell were they thinking bundling it with a release? I probably spent 10 minutes trying to get it to work before disregarding it as utterly useless.

This is why (X)buntu is not suitable for new Linux users. It is not mature enough.

Well, I'm a new Linux user--I used to be a whiz on the DOS command line, but that's about it. Luckily the Ubuntu Forums are a welcoming place for total newbs. All the stumbling blocks I've come across (what few there were) were already addressed in previous posts, so I didn't even have to embarrass myself by asking. :)

Agreed that it's not quite ready for Grandma, but it's definitely getting a hell of a lot closer.

Re:I'm sure I'm not alone

[the_womble]

I find it hard to believe I'm the only one who is going to find it hard to take an OS with the name Feisty Fawn seriously!

Unlike an OS that has serious codenames like: Snowball, Dolly, Longhorn Blackcomb, etc.

In case you did not know, Feisty Fawn is will officially be Ubuntu 7.04 once launched.

REALLY!?

[sunami88]

It seems that Linux on the desktop is getting there, with Ubuntu. Eugenia of OSNews fame wrote a glorifying preview about Ubuntu's next version

Well if Eugenia said it, it must be true!

Re:REALLY!?

[VON-MAN]

Eugenia's claim to fame is that she's been writing about Linux desktops and distros for a long time. Not that she's very balanced or objective. To me, her reviews are allways very opinionated without really being to the point.

A real woman in other words...


Ducks...

Re:REALLY!?

[drunkahol]

At least two people get the underlying issue here ;)

Can't understand a Eugenia article being linked and the majority of comments are NOT about the bias of the review or the opinionated reasoning.

To be honest - it's certainly a long way from Eugenia's worst piece on the web. Perhaps she's mellowing in her old age (says he at 35!).

Duncan

Re:problems with ubuntu

[houstonbofh]

Since the default install is one big root partition, your problem was one of your own making. Hard to blame that on Ubuntu. I have sold several Ubuntu systems that have been rock stable, with no problems. If you buy the right hardware, and don't get fancy with the configuration, it is rock solid. If you compile your graphics drivers, you just might have graphics problems. A long time ago, this used to be called common sense. I guess really-fucking-rare sense just doesn't roll off the tung.

Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Inoshiro]

"By manually entering the vertical and horizontal sync in the xorg.conf file it fixed the problem for my 1440x900 screen and I was able to load the LiveCD and finally install Feisty on the hard drive."

If Windows is too hard for people (and it is), what on Earth makes you think mortals will be able to do that? That's not a mature product designed for end users, despite how (otherwise) nice Ubuntu is.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[CliffSpradlin]

Seriously. Stuff like that makes it impossible for me to use Linux, as I can't afford to have downtime in which I have to track down a problem like that. And people who wouldn't know how to do that are just screwed.

It's bizarre to me how this article somehow gets doublethink-titled "Destop Linux Matured" when you've got problems like that (and the wireless problem he detailed which no average user would possibly comprehend). When Vista had all its problems in beta (and in release), Slashdot didn't give it a pass and call it "Desktop Windows Matured", why should Linux be any different?

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[houstonbofh]

Comparing a user install to a factory pre-install is not a easy win. Have you installed Windows lately? Without the manufactures driver cd?

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[LingNoi]

I think the point the article was trying to make was that its easier then it has been on previous Linux Distributions not that its "ready for desktop" or that its "easier then windows" because the Author has previous Linux experience and compares different versions of Linux systems.

Don't take this article as a Windows vs Linux thing. Its a Linux vs Linux article.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[corvair2k1]

I think this was a bug only in Feisty's pre-release. I often simply use a dapper or edgy liveCD's preconfiguration when I make a change to the graphics on my machines.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Inoshiro]

Yes, within the last month I've installed Windows XP. With bootcamp, it was a remarkable process. Apple has managed to improve Microsoft's install routine to the point that I didn't have to do anything; it booted into the installer CD, and once that was done, I put in the bootcamp CD as instructed (which it made for me).

Everything works in Windows on the otherwise standard Apple hardware, although not as well as it does under MacOS (the brightness and volume settings seem to have much coarser settings, and there is no Expose-style visual feedback, nor automatic sleeping when the lid is closed, etc).

I think the Ubuntu developers working on the install process should focus on matching that kind of ability. Xorg's config file is the big ball and chain I see, since the design is ill-suited to modern life (where there isn't a feisty guru who sets up the cards, monitors, and other fields manually). Until I can manually change resolution seamlessly and easily in a Linux distro out of the box, we're not to the level of MacOS 7 or Win95. Xorg isn't the only Win3.1-era-usability problem in a standard Linux distro; plenty of other software makes wrong assumptions about its target audience to be considered ready for end-users.

The Ubuntu team is focusing on making the experience good, but they're only so many people. You have to get some serious commitment and drive to get all the software on the same page, audience wise.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[VON-MAN]

Uhm, taking a longer time installing a Linux computer because you _had_ to have ATI video does NOT constitute downtime to me. Rebooting your computer because you've had it running a *week* long is downtime. Seriously.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Telvin_3d]

I agree with everything you just said but I have a comment on your last point. I think the vast majority of developers know exactly who their target end user is... themselves. There is almost no one working to 'dumb down' the amount of knowledge needed to run the OS because that is not how the developers themselves run the OS. They are designing an OS for their own use which sounds to me like a fine thing to do. The problem is that there is a group of developers and a few end users who are so out of touch with anyone outside the technology field that they are working under the assumption that everyone has the same basic skill that they do.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

That's not a mature product designed for end users, despite how (othere wise) nice Ubuntu is.

Uh? One bug for one particular hardware type in a beta release and it's 'not designed for end users'?

Jeepers! I guess vista isn't a mature product designed for end users - it's beta had bugs. I guess osx isn't a mature product designed for end users either - it's beta had bugs.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[LingNoi]

Uh? One bug for one particular hardware type in a beta release and it's 'not designed for end users'?

Correction Alpha Release, Betas haven't started yet. :D

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I stand corrected.

Thanks for backing up the point of my post tho' :-)

Feisty isn't remotely close to being released, it's undergoing testing.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[slugstone]

Why do you think Windows XP desktop is mature? It is just bizarre to think if you had that problem with windows. Do you think you could even solve it. It happen to me, and the windows guru could not solve the problem. I just had to live with it. I was just plain screwed. I have always been able to get help, advice or solutions to a problem I had been having with linux. Now that support.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Antique Geekmeister]

But those are *exactly* the sorts of things Windows users have put up with for years. Manual driver installations for hardware not supported by the basic Windows OS is quite normal for laptops, especially for fancy display chipsets, newer wireless or serial port chipsets, or even newer hard drive controllers. This is why OEM manufacturers send those update CD's, and encourage you to visit their websites for newer drivers.

Don't mark Ubunto down for that: give them credit for keeping it easy to update and fix. Since the bug was reported, expect Ubuntu to address this in the next generation's X configuration tool. (Or expect Debian to fix it, if they can properly push the problem upstream.)

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Gregory Cox]

The grandparent post's complaint is not that "the beta has bugs". It's practically inevitable that there will be some bugs in an OS, even in the release version.

The grandparent is complaining because to fix this particular bug the reviewer needed to tweak a config file. That certainly requires a higher level of knowledge than generally required during normal operation in Ubuntu, and makes it more difficult to use.

Whether Ubuntu is more difficult to use than versions of Windows or other OSes is something that needs more data to debate fairly. Leaving that question aside, the grandparent makes an important point: when measuring ease of use, you shouldn't use a bug-free system where everything works as expected as your only benchmark. If there are going to be bugs to some extent, you should also look at ways the user fixes or works around them, with the aim of creating a robust user experience, so that the bugs that do exist are more tolerable to users.

Friendly user forums are a good start, but I hope Ubuntu developers will also think carefully about other ways to make it easier for users to diagnose and fix minor problems.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Antique Geekmeister]

Apple hardware is unusual: it's well-tested and well-defined. That makes a huge difference for installing *anything*.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[FrankNputer]

Yeah, but when was the last time anyone had to edit a text file in order to get their monitor working in either Windows OR OSX?

That has been a long-standing issue with Linux in general - its ability to adapt to a monitor change. I moved a machine running a fairly recent version of Fedora to a different LCD, just to have it try to use a rate higher than what that particular (crappy) LCD would accept. But with just a black screen...there's no way to even fix the text file.

Now if this was a Windows machine, if all else failed it would fall over to 640x480 low-color VGA, and you could at least stumble through finding a farking driver.

Seriously, if you expect home users to adopt Linux, they have to at least be able to point & click their way to a solution. Auto-adjusting the display to something usable is a pretty basic requirement, IMHO.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[marcosdumay]

I never saw a "mortal" using a monitor resolution that is not 800x600 on Windows. No problem here.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Master of Transhuman]

You're right - as Woody Allen observed - and this applies to the entire IT industry in spades - "Nothing works and nobody cares."

Windows, Linux, Mac, it's all the same problem.

As I always say:

Windows is CRAP.

Linux is ALSO CRAP.

BUT Linux is FREE crap.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Master of Transhuman]

Again, it's not changing resolutions. I can do that in Kubuntu via the GUI.

It's the whole SETUP and CONFIG PROCESS that needs to be addressed as a PATTERN.

Linux developers seem to address this in several phases:

1) Get something - anything - working. Put it out there.

2) Get a GUI working. Put it out there.

3) Automate the process. Put it out there.

4) Change the whole subsystem in the kernel. Put it out there.

Where any given distro is in the process above depends on its manpower and maturity.

Right now, printers appear to be in stage 3 with GUI configuration and CUPS.

Wireless is in stage 2 and struggling to get to the stage 3 because of driver availability problems and poor GUI wireless utilities.

Xorg is somewhere between stage 2 and stage 3. Apparently the next version of Xorg will be moving to stage 3. If true, that will be a huge boon to Linux since display problems simply shouldn't exist and it should not be tolerated to have to manually edit a configuration file to get the display working. It's okay if the display comes up in the wrong resolution initially - I mean, Windows does that - but all you should have to do then is right click on the desktop, and change the resolution. That's a no brainer.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[Master of Transhuman]

"Auto-adjusting the display to something usable is a pretty basic requirement, IMHO."

I agree with you, however I have to relate this story.

One of my current clients has several Dell machines hooked up to Dell monitors.

A couple of them have the nasty habit, when rebooting, of suddenly saying "This monitor mode is not supported" - and proceeding to freeze the system. You can't do ANYTHING when they do this except hit the power button.

I haven't bothered to try to fix this yet as it's a minor issue that only occurs when rebooting and the client rarely reboots these machines while in production work, but I just thought it was interesting that the combination of Windows XP, Dell video and Dell monitors STILL can't manage to keep the system working right.

I've been using it.

[Chas]

I've been running the Herd releases for Feisty. And I just can't say enough good things about it.

Wireless just works. Automatically. No dicking around with swapping config files if I switch between an open AP and a WEP/WPA-locked AP.

Beryl. With the underlying AIGLX support, Beryl installed and just worked right out of the box on my laptop. SWEET!

Ubuntu has drastically reduced the hassle of just getting a Linux system into a usable, functional configuration. If they keep going, they're going to be a credible replacement for Windows, even for mega-luddites.

Re:I've been using it.

[Chas]

Well. My system, a Latitude 120L has had the shitty Broadcom "AirForce One" wireless mini-PCI card pulled out. I replaced it with an Intel 2200BG. On Feisty it just worked straight out. After all the pain in the butt I went through with getting it working on 6.06 and 6.10, I was practically spooging my pants when wireless just came straight up and I got a list of APs to connect to.

And which mouse issue?

Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[svunt]

First paragraph of the review says this

..There was a problem though and X11 would crash on load -- and the graphical safe mode would not work either (confirmed bug). The 915resolution hack was not needed for my Intel graphics card, but I needed to have more information for my laptop's LCD. By manually entering the vertical and horizontal sync in the xorg.conf file it fixed the problem for my 1440x900 screen and I was able to load the LiveCD and finally install Feisty on the hard drive.

Yeah, that sounds really easy for an average Windows user...I'm sure you wouldn't lose 99% of them right there. If you honestly think that an OS which needs a "hack" or "manually entering the vertical and horizontal sync in the xorg.conf file" beofre it will install is ready to compete with one that installs with nothing more challenging than "what time zone are you in", you're fooling yourself.

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[LingNoi]

This isn't a Windows vs. Linux article. Its a Linux vs. Linux Article.

The screen resolution problem he was having was because he was using alpha software. Its like comparing Windows Longhorn as the final product for the end user. This version of Ubuntu still has a lot more testing to do before its being released.

So far we've had the following of Ubuntu Feistry Fawn: Herd 1, 2, 3, 4 and are currently on 5. These are "Alpha"s?

Next there is going to be "Release Candidate"s. These are "Beta"s? I can assure you that there are going to be at least RC1 and RC2 of Feisty before its released.

So any specific problems with Feisty Fawn should be commented on after its released not while it is still in Alpha. :D

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[miro f]

Ubuntu isn't even at a beta stage yet, let alone being released.

If this bug is still around when it's released, then that's an issue.

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[waferhead]

...That's sort of what I was thinking, except for a minor detail or 3; ..on ~98% of all machines in existence, that issue with a buggy screenmode/display would not exist. ...98% of Windows users would be just as flummoxed why they were stuck at 640x480, 16 colors, and be so screwd if they had to install XP from scratch.

(98% being strictly a number pulled from my ass, but it's likely close) ..and the other 2% of Windows users would hit Google and find the drivers or the fix just as Eugenia did. They might even use a Knoppix CD to do it.

WHEN things go pear shaped under Windows, the same troubleshooting techniques/sequences occur as under Linux. Folks who can actually fix one likely could deal with the other.

The mechanics of fixing things differ, what usually "blows up" differs, but the same skills are used. (Under Linux it's (almost) ALWAYS user error, my bad, jacking with things without having a backup copy of a config file first, deleting stuff (rm is quite serious about its job))

Having said that, and working on both since Win3.1 and ~ Linux Kernel 1.13 on Slackware, if I have something "blow up" (VERY rare under Linux, not quite so rare under WinXP, but not too bad), the chances of actually FIXING Linux in a few minutes vs a forced reinstall are MUCH better, ~10:1 vs Windows.

Happy Mandra.. Mandriva user for many years now, and still haven't found joy in Ubuntu, despite repeatedly trying. It's OK. It's just not at the same level as Mandriva IMHO,and usually has SOMETHING I absolutely require that's just flat unavailable or only in some 2 year old version... and will not build due to dependency hell, which in spite of what you hear, apt is not the ultimate cure of... urpmi has worked MUCH better for me over time.

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[svunt]

Sure, but I've installed Dapper, and I have 1440x900 native resolution, and I was amazed when first trying Linux that I had to manually edit a file to get that option - it's just not a good omen when you're making a major move like switching OSes. As for this not being a Windows vs Linux article, read t5he summary...I was specifically addressing a claim made in the review - that this release would be good for Windows/OSX users to switch to.

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[LingNoi]

Your problem with the screen resolution is pretty bad for Ubuntu. At the moment everyone is having this problem and I have no doubt that it will be fixed in a future release soon if not even better.

As for this not being a Windows vs Linux article, read t5he summary...I was specifically addressing a claim made in the review - that this release would be good for Windows/OSX users to switch to.

...and why is this claim invalid exactly? Because you are addressing the problems the author is having with the alpha software as what the final product will be like where as the author is talking about the final release being good for windows/OSX users to switch to.

If you get these problems in the final release then you have a point until then lets just wait, ok?

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[blackest_k]

Ubuntu is a good distro for Linux Newbies not Windows Newbies.
Being on the wong side of 40 I've been lucky enough to experience the microchip revolution, I had to learn Log tables and how to use a slide rule (although the calculator caught on fast and the digital watch with red LED display. I started with the sinclair ZX81 and 1K of RAM moving onwards and upwards over the years and it was fun.
  with the introduction of the bbs and later the internet you could be engaged with a massive community of talent and make your own mark interesting times for sure.

Computing was a frontier and you could be out there exploring it. Today with a mature computer industry we have the mass market windows and wheres the fun in that, Windows isn't fun it's boring, theres no challenges it just works to an extent, sure there's virus problems malware problems to sort out but they are tedious failings of a badly designed os. Anything that is interesting is locked away closed source. Whats left ripping movies and music hardly challenging or interesting. Oh theres also the big brother aspect of reporting tools like WGA poking into our stuff, Windows really manages to suck away at the soul.

However there is Linux and that is interesting it is 95% open, 5% that isn't are the binary blobs that certain hardware manufacturers insist we use. The real annoyance with these blobs is we can't go there and thats why they are loathed so much. Linux is full of little challenges and some big ones too, take that Monitor problem 1440 by 900. in Xorg.conf all it took was the addition of 1440x900 in to a line of relatively square screen resolutions. Sure if there was a better hardware database and the guys doing Xorg want to they can ensure that this can be done automatically. It is not important to the majority of people who run Linux, If you want a good os that doesn't suck where it all just works choose OSX.

Linux has its rewards for people like me who like to be challenged, who enjoy developing skills that in windows are pointless, because you can't see the code in windows.

Ubuntu can be used at a desktop level by ordinary people but its not particularly for them now. It's for people with a genuine interest in getting under the hood.

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[sootman]

Yeah, or this: "With this way I was easily up and running with mp3 and many video codecs support in minutes. However, not all is great with this as new bugs arise: I manually installed libdvdcss because this is not included in the restricted list and Totem now refuses to playback any DVD if you try to load it via Totem's menu -- although it plays fine via HAL when you popup the DVD in the drive (but no chapters or fast forward is possible as all DVD menu options are frozen)."

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[Master of Transhuman]

The problem is exactly that: the odds that the bug WILL be there in final release is actually quite HIGH becaue (X)buntu doesn't have the manpower to do adequate quality control and testing and then prompt resolution of bugs.

The fact that a laptop overheating bug has existed for a year or more demonstrates that quite clearly.

The fact that the Kubuntu 6.06 install process was NEVER TESTED AT ALL (how else did they miss the fact that you can't exit the mount point change screen?) proves it as well.

Ubuntu has been overhyped. The maintainers can't keep up with the popularity and the pressure to add eye candy features rather than nail down the basics and insure quality.

Re:Good for newbies coming from Windows...ummm

[Master of Transhuman]

"It's just not at the same level as Mandriva IMHO"

Agreed - exactly my point.

(X)buntu is not a MATURE distro. It took Mandriva YEARS to get to the point where it is the easiest distro for a newbie to use (aside from Xandros which is designed to be for Windows users). How long has Ubuntu been around? Not long enough. They're coming up faster than some distros because they have some money behind them - but they need more work before they can be recommended to a new user.

Re:not quite ready

[houstonbofh]

Hmmm....
Gaming... Anything by Id, and most Unreal. Quake Wars?
PS: World of Warcraft runs in Wine.
DVR... MythTV?

Yep... Linux has a way to go. Now excuse me while I go to play RTCW:ET in Ubuntu.

Re:More desktop - yay?

[VON-MAN]

"Why is it that everyone is so focused on linux desktops, and not the core internals of the OS?"

Core internals? Hah, I know where you're from. So, a question for a question: where are all the Windows fanboys raving about the fantastic core internals of Vista? That is right.

"I hear many linux geeks whining about how bloated the windows vista system is"

You do? Well, it must be true than, eh? I remember geeks complaining about how bloated XP, 2000, ME, 98SE, 98 or KDE, Gnome, 2.6, 2.5, Red Hat, SuSE etc. etc. etc. is. So, when I hear someone complain about bloat, i don't take them serious, it really was the only thing they could think of. And it sounds really professional, like you actually only care about serious server-like stuff.

"Why do we then go and focus so much on the same aspects of linux?" Sorry, what's your beef??? I can't parse the logic of your comment. First you complain that linux geeks are preoccupied with Vista bloat, then you state we do the same with linux (or don't do the same)?

"I read the malloc man page, and the big memory mapping issue still remains, and as a result I still need to continually reboot to keep my ram defragmented....." Yeah, I read the same, you know how much work it is to keep that ram defragmented? I do it by hand(!!), can you believe how much work that is!

Re:More desktop - yay?

[fabs64]

The difference between the Linux bloat, and the Vista bloat, is that I can (and do) still use fluxbox as my wm if that's what I prefer.

Windows user won't switch without pain or epiphany

[schwit1]

I'm a Linux newbie, but very knowledgeable with Windows. I've been using kubuntu edgy exclusively for about a month and it's been anything but easy on a Thinkpad T30 laptop. My IP2200 wireless card connects to open APs, but won't work with WPA(XP works fine), there's an overall lack of polish and too much work is required at the command line. I'm really hoping Fiesty helps with some of this. Improving OpenOffice should be next. It doesn't hold a candle to MS Office 2003. I would also love to see Fiesty have an import tool so it could use the Windows and MS Office settings. Making the OpenOffice keyboard and toolbars identical to MS Office as an option would be a big help. Windows users will stay with Windows until the security problems get overwhelming(pain), upgrade costs get too high(pain) OR they see something obviously better(epiphany). If Fiesty is solid and OpenOffice is made to work like MS Office then Microsoft is in trouble. Otherwise Linux will remain nothing more than a mosquito.

Just a minor correction, it is not beta yet

[vivaoporto]

From the Ubuntu forums:

Ubuntu 7.04 Alpha 5 CD image testing started
** FEISTY IS NOT SUITABLE FOR EVERYDAY USE RIGHT NOW IT IS ONLY IN ALPHA. **
If you are interested in helping to test CD images for the upcoming Ubuntu release you can find more information here:

Re:Just a minor correction, it is not beta yet

[wthanna]

That is correct.. kind of odd to write reviews on "alpha" software, that every day on the Ubuntu Forums, people are warned about using. The point of these alpha releases is to get new stuff out there... squash the bugs... get the fixes in to the system.. before the beta and Release Candidate. The final is still a month away.. So most of the complaints seem to be about people expecting everything in an "Alpha version" to work "out of the box".. If you are not interested in finding and fixing... you should not be using alpha versions of an operating system! The very point of there existence is to "bring these problems out to be fixed".

Re:Windows user won't switch without pain or epiph

[LingNoi]

If Fiesty is solid and OpenOffice is made to work like MS Office then Microsoft is in trouble. Otherwise Linux will remain nothing more than a mosquito.

I'm sorry but I am confused your saying to unless OpenOffice clones office then Ubuntu will be nothing but a clone?

I think it would kinda suck if OpenOffice's goal was to just clone Microsoft. If you want MS Office on Linux then use wine or try and pressure the Office Team to make a copy for Linux systems.

One feature of OpenOffice that saved my girlfriend was that she was doing her dissertation last year and she did it in MS Word but to get it printed she needed it in PDF format. Now we were both busy at university and neither of us:

• Wanted to waste money on a PDF converter for MS Word.
• Had time to look for a free one for MS Word.

In the end we imported it into open office. Fixed the import errors and then used OpenOffice's native convert to PDF. Open Office isn't super great though because neither of us could figure out how to do Chapters (like you have on a book at the top of the page to show which one your on) in either Word or Office. Theres some kind of Hack to do it in Open Office but again, no time.

Hope they make it easier to write books in OO

Xorg

[feranick]

This is a very serious problem of Ubuntu that is overlooked by the developers. Problems with specific hardware like those in the TFA, can be common especially these days with so many different combinations of monitors and video cards. I'd like to see some sort of "safe mode" that kicks in when there are problems, and a GUI to allow proper reconfiguration. If you expect a windows user to manually edit Xorg.conf, you're wrong.

Re:Xorg

[kripkenstein]

This is a very serious problem of Ubuntu that is overlooked by the developers. Problems with specific hardware like those in the TFA, can be common especially these days with so many different combinations of monitors and video cards. I'd like to see some sort of "safe mode" that kicks in when there are problems, and a GUI to allow proper reconfiguration.

You are correct about this problem, however, the developers are not ignoring it. In fact they were considering implementing more or less what you suggested for Feisty. This has been deferred, however, and for good reason - X.Org, in a future release (7.3, IIRC) will offer related functionality. So Ubuntu developing it themselves would be a lot of effort, for just a few months.

Hopefully with the next X.Org and the next (after Feisty) Ubuntu we will see many of the typical X problems disappear.

Re:Xorg

[feranick]

Thanks for your note. I am really glad they are working on it.

Re:problems with ubuntu

[freeweed]

Did it by chance take you 15 minutes to copy a 1MB file?

Re:But has it matured quickly enough?

[LingNoi]

Feisty Fawn is in Alpha 5 and in a few weeks will go into Beta testing (Real beta testing not Google Beta Testing).

I'll let you know when it passes RFG testing (Ready for grandma).

Re:Windows user won't switch without pain or epiph

[mabinogi]

Open Office isn't super great though because neither of us could figure out how to do Chapters (like you have on a book at the top of the page to show which one your on) in either Word or Office. Theres some kind of Hack to do it in Open Office but again, no time. Page styles will do the trick - and not via a hack.
I was able to do a basic book layout (with different headers and footers on facing pages, containing chapter names on one side, plus special pages with no headers, and the correct margins after printing and folding) using page styles without too much in the way of pain - just a bit of hunting through the help.

Re:More desktop - yay?

[slapys]

These are some well thought out words. I wish I had some mod points so I could mark your comment as valuable in some way.

Re:Windows user won't switch without pain or epiph

[schwit1]

"I'm sorry but I am confused your saying to unless OpenOffice clones office then Ubuntu will be nothing but a clone?"

I'm saying that if OpenOffice works like MS Office then Microsoft is in trouble because it will be easier to move to OpenOffice. People will not change to OpenOffice unless it is familiar. Besides, from a polish and maturity perspective the MS Office interface(2003, not 2007) is a lot better than OpenOffice.

No, at least not for Ubuntu Re:no NO NO!

[GreatBunzinni]

Ubuntu will not be ready for any decent work while it still has bugs like the infamous overheating bug. I mean, I love Kubuntu and I adopted it as my main OS but seriously, it still suffers from a showstopping overheating bug which is almost 2 years old. I mean, what good is an OS for if it simply can't cope with any mildly CPU-intensive application (i.e., compiling, encoding sound files, running any 3D application, etc...) before hanging, crashing and endangering the hardware itself?

Re:No, at least not for Ubuntu Re:no NO NO!

[Master of Transhuman]

I have to agree that the following response from an Ubuntu developer launchpad doesn't help very much:

Re: [Bug 22336] Re: laptop overheats when performing CPU intensive tasks. from Scott James Remnant at 2006-10-17 17:15:59 UTC

On Tue, 2006-10-17 at 01:31 +0000, Trae McCombs wrote:

> The only reason I even REMOTELY considered switching to another distro was
> because of this bug. Now I'm stuck. My laptop is broken, and I can't use
> anything else. And Edgy won't be fixed either it seems. This means, it'll
> be a whole nother 6 months I have to wait, and hope this bug is fixed.
>
This mail isn't really very helpful.

Nagging or wailing on a bug doesn't get it fixed.

This bug hasn't not been fixed (urgh, green wiggly lines) because
developers don't believe it's that important.

This bug has not been fixed because the developers have no idea why this
happens, and not enough information to find out. We don't even know
where to begin to ask further questions.

At this point, the most useful thing somebody with this bug can do is
get their laptop in front of a developer. Then the bug can be
demonstrated, and explicitly demonstrated as not occuring with Mandriva
2007.

Also we'd really like to know whether this bug occurs with the pristine
upstream kernel or not.

We can then also try various kernel packages on the laptop, bisecting
until we figure out exactly which line of code causes the behaviour to
occur or go away.

Perhaps somebody could get to UDS-MTV and bring their laptop?

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
scott@ubuntu.com

I'd say this is an example of what is wrong with distros today (NOT Linux per se): lack of testing, lack of manpower to handle issues that arise, and too much time devoted to "featuritis" rather than nailing down the basics.

OTOH, I have to say that I think this whole notion of controlling the hardware from software in the OS - power, cooling, etc. - is a recipe for disaster. I mean, Windows XP STILL has occasional shutdown problems. Windows 98, 2000 and XP ALL had ridiculous problems with power control for YEARS.

It just doesn't work.

The bottom line: the manufacturers need to take power control OUT of the OS and put it back in the BIOS where it is independent of whatever bugs are introduced by the OS programmers. I don't see why the kernel needs to be concerned about the fan speed or how much power is being consumed by the CPU. That should be AUTOMATED - and not by the kernel, but by the hardware itself.

Either that, or they need to have this stuff programmed by the people who MAKE the hardware and KNOW what the hardware requires to be properly controlled. I don't think that's the case now, based on the screwups that keep happening.

How in hell are OS developers supposed to be able to program a general purpose hardware controller that works with every piece of Taiwan crap that comes out on the market?

It doesn't make any sense.

Re:No, at least not for Ubuntu Re:no NO NO!

[chuhwi]

Please, no. We have only recently gotten to the point where power management and suspend-to-ram work properly on linux. This is because buggy ACPI code has been the norm. Even now, so many laptops have bad cpu frequency scaling information in their bios; luckily, linux can throw this out and determine the correct values. This specific bug is also probably a result of bad bios code having problems with various kernels. Windows has similar problems for the same reason; ACPI is a hideous monstrosity that is notoriously difficult to implement correctly.

Hardware problems

[petrus4]

For people experiencing hardware problems preventing them from having the usual effortless Ubuntu experience, I offer the following advice. Linux still *does* have a few blind spots where hardware support is concerned, but if you can maneuver around these, you'll be fine.

1) If you can get non-USB replacements for your USB hardware, you might want to consider doing so. Obviously with things like cameras and memory cards, that's not an option...but for such devices as keyboards, it is. You might even have less problems under Windows if you do that as well.

2) Use non-wireless network hardware where possible. I myself have a RealTek Ethernet card, which has very solid support under both Linux and the BSDs...it is also one of the core hardware drivers included with the Menuet OS.

3) If you can avoid a need for printing entirely, you'll be a lot happier. I don't own a printer, and I am deeply gratified to be able to make that claim. I consider printers genuinely evil things. I've been using different types of computers on and off since the early 80s, and in all of that time, the one type of hardware that I've seen people having more consistent difficulty with is printers. That is still true under Linux.

Re:Hardware problems

[drunkahol]

Good for you - stick with your PS/2 keyboard and mouse. Don't try wireless networking. Don't use a printer. For the REAL world, however, some of us like to use those things.

I've been around Linux for many years now so have seen it when you REALLY had to be picky about the hardware you bought. To offer your 3 points of advice these days is seriously wide of the mark.

1) I've not had a USB device unrecognised under Linux for a while now. And I don't EVER remember a USB keyboard or mouse failing.

2) Wireless is certainly more of a blind-spot for Linux, but maybe I'm fortunate in that 3 of the 4 different wireless devices I've used have worked straight out of the box. The 4th wasn't THAT difficult to install either - although I wouldn't be recommending a novice tried it.

3) Unbelieveable twaddle. Printer management is pretty damn good under Linux in my view. I've not yet come across a printer that Linux can't manage to talk to politely. And I'm talking about a full range of printers from deskjets, personal lasers, high volume colour lasers through to A0 plotters. Never once have I struggled to get them working.

Why I bother replying I don't know - it's only slashdot after all. And a discussion about a Eugenia article at that! At least I've got these monkeys off my back now and can sink as many Guinness as physically possible tonight.

Happy Guinness Day (sorry - did I fall for the marketing ploy there?)

Duncan

Re:the answer to your question is

[hugzz]

that in Windoze this problem WoN'T even exist. Setting resolution in Windoze is not the huge problem it ALWAYS is in Linux. have I KNOW I have tried it numerous times. Yeah yeah, blame it on closed source drivers. well, ordinary average people dont give a hoot about closed source drivers and dont even care.

Oh, it is? I just go to the "screen resolution" menu and chose one of literally 40 options, and it changes the resolution for me. I haven't done anything special to allow this, and I didn't specially chose my hardware for linux.

But anyway, my original point was that people expect to start up linux for the first time and for it to be as easy to use as windows. Of COURSE it wont be as easy to use as windows because you have 7+ years experience using windows, and 1 hour experience using linux. Give yourself some time to get used to it and you'll find it easier. I've only been using linux for a year or two (I think) and I already find it easier to use than windows, which I used since at least 3.1, and still use on a daily basis at uni.

Option #3 - the government

[khasim]

Your comment about "Joe User" is accurate ... but premature.

The group that will initially drive Linux adoption (whether *buntu or other) will be governments and businesses.

The majority (99.9%+) of workers in those two categories will not be focused on the latest hardware and toys. They use wired connections, 2D graphics and save their data onto a central server. Their users do not maintain nor upgrade their boxes. They have experts who do that for them. And being Debian-based, *buntu is very easy to upgrade/maintain.

The only features missing for those categories are email / calendaring / scheduling (similar to Outlook/Exchange, GroupWise or Lotus Notes) and directory services (similar to Active Directory or eDirectory). The directory services may be here soon from Red Hat's Directory Server http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/directory. But the email segment is taking a bit longer. Eventually that will be here also.

At which point, non-US governments will be heavily pushing to get off the Microsoft upgrade treadmill. Particularly since they'll be able to invest in their LOCAL developers to polish Linux for their specific needs.

As the government / business workers gain familiarity with Linux at work, they'll be more comfortable using Linux at home. But the home market will be the LAST market that Linux will crack. And it will take YEARS (literally).

If you want to bring the home market around quicker, you need to focus on bringing WINE up to speed for their applications (and the home users have a LOT of different apps, each with slightly different requirements and almost NONE of them written in an easily portable fashion). Or you can work on near identical apps for them (which addresses your point about them "learning" by rote).

Re:Option #3 - the government

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's not the email. Email is easy: it's the integration with calendar services, and *that* has been painful. There are just too many badly written, never completed open source calendar servers and none of them are well integrated with the clients.

Re:Option #3 - the government

[JonJ]

wtf? eDirectory, GroupWise, Lotus Notes and so on, already runs on GNU/Linux. Give Novell a call and be enlightened.

Re:Option #3 - the government

[Elbowgeek]

You make a very good point. In fact, the reason the "IBM compatible" PC became the desktop of choice in the 90s was that most people used one at work, and once they became affordable to the ordinary worker bee they took off. And it follows that as Linux permeates the corporation the familiarity will start to trickle down.

And lets not ignore the halls of learning. Large computer corporations make huge donations of hardware and software to academic institutions in order to breed familiarity. As Linux starts making inroads into the educational market we'll see youth growing up with it, and it will become even more acceptable.

Cheers

Re:Option #3 - the government

[IGnatius T Foobar]

The only features missing for those categories are email / calendaring / scheduling (similar to Outlook/Exchange, GroupWise or Lotus Notes)

If you're looking for a good open source groupware server, you might want to try Citadel [http://www.citadel.org]. It does a lot of the same things Exchange does, and it does integrate well with popular clients (Thunderbird+Lightning, Kontact, Evolution, and there's even an Outlook connector currently in beta test).

I know we've been down this road before, but Citadel is *good* -- so good, in fact, that Linux Journal has actually declared "Microsoft Exchange, meet your replacement." Give it a try.

Re:Option #3 - the government

[westlake]

As the government / business workers gain familiarity with Linux at work, they'll be more comfortable using Linux at home. But the home market will be he LAST market that Linux will crack. And it will take YEARS

The home is a distinct - divergent - market. It is not government. It is not business.

It is a market with its own rules and its own values, rules and values the Geek only dimly understands.

For all his talk of the Cathedral and the Bazaar, it is the Linux Geek who has the deepest faith in the mandate from heaven, the top-down solution. He has forgotten what drove users in mass to the PC in the first place.

It wasn't a development model. It wasn't the technical superiority of an application or an OS. It was the freedom to use a computer outside the control of his employer. It was freedom from the system-nazi. Freedom from the Geek.

Freedom to play a game. Watch a movie. Work at your own pace and with your own tools. Without having to answer to anyone because you chose Photoshop over the GIMP. The $30 Blu-Ray HD video over the amateur's DiVX rip.

f you want to bring the home market around quicker, you need to focus on bringing WINE up to speed for their applications

Expedients like WINE and BootCamp are fundamentally an admission of failure. You need them because applications don't exist for your platform, but among those for whom Windows is the platform of choice, they make no compelling argument for migration.

home users have a LOT of different apps

Open Linspire's Click'N'Run catalog. 20,000 programs.

Subtract the number that have no interest to the non-technical home user. From what remains, subtract the number that have been ported to Windows or began as a native Windows apps. Not much left, is there?

Try to find a replacement for something as basic as Print Shop.

Programs of the sort which have been staples on the home PC for thirty years.

Re:Option #3 - the government

[unoengborg]

What's more important is that the calendar solutions that exist on Linux often doesn't run on windows as well. To beat the outlook/exchange dominance there need to be a client and a server from the same vendor that runs on Linux, Windows or even MacOS.

Today admins will have to mix and match plugins, servers and clients to have a calendaring system that works cross platform. Being cross platform is very important as most organizations will not be able to switch to Linux on every Desktop at a resonable cost (e.g. due to some specialized software that not yet run on Linux). These desktops must still be able access the IT infrastructure of the company.

If multiple vendors are involved it is always sombody elses fault when it doesn't work, and the risk that it doesn't work is bigger as all components of the mail/calendaring/schedueling system may be updated at different times. This is one of the reasons Outlook/Exchange have been such a success.

Web/AJAX based systems like Zimbra could remedy this another alternative could be Lotus/Domino from IBM. The new Lotus 8 (currently in beta) looks very promising.

Re:Option #3 - the government

[Antique Geekmeister]

Has it improved a lot in the last 2 years? I was unimpressed a few years ago, but it may have gotten better. I've gone through serious pain with many other such systems, being asked to test and evaluate them and often seeing them come up quite short.

Re:Option #3 - the government

[gbulmash]

Try to find a replacement for something as basic as Print Shop.

The cross-platform web services method of delivering applications is growing. Adobe's about to release a web-based PhotoShop (a "lite" version). Google's got their web-based office suite. Java, JavaScript, and Flash are available in every major browser that runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

I released a flash-based drawing app that has *some* similarities to Print Shop, called FunDraw.

I'll probably get clobbered when Adobe releases an online version of Illustrator. But for now, it's a pretty cool app and I'm working diligently to improve it.

- Greg

Re:Option #3 - the government

[Master of Transhuman]

I agree - corporations will drive Linux acceptance on the desktop. Slowly, but it will happen as long as Microsoft keeps screwing up.

Corporations will also solve the Linux driver problem. Once corporations start demanding Linux desktops, the peripheral manufacturers will be leaned on by the major retailers and companies like IBM to produce Linux drivers.

Only a matter of time - maybe another ten years, but it will happen.

Or at least, it will happen IF clowns like Ubuntu don't keep screwing up the basics of making an OS that just works...

Re:Option #3 - the government

[FictionPimp]

Unless you work in education, or medical in the Midwest. Then it is everywhere, and the pay is nice too.

Re:Windows user won't switch without pain or epiph

[apathy maybe]

>Windows user won't switch without pain or epiphany

But GNOME comes with Epiphany! And I discovered that it also has a bunch of plugins/extensions ala Firefix (on a Debian based system such as Ubuntu, do a search in the packages).

Mod parent UP!

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Or mod grand parent down.

While what parent said is just obvious, it is much better than what the grand parent said, which is plain wrong. Well, maybe not plain wrong, but even an outright lie.

Re:But has it matured quickly enough?

[Delkster]

OMG, it's so simple, my grandmother could do it!

Does your grandmother routinely install Windows on random hardware and hunt for drivers for the pieces of hardware that aren't supported by the OS out-of-the-box?

That's what I though.

Instead, your grandma would probably just buy a computer that has the OS bundled and pre-installed. She would do so with Windows -- maybe she should also do so in case of Linux? Or in some other way delegate the hardware compatibility issue to someone else who can do it? You know, it so happens that compatibility between hardware and software isn't automatic, with any OS. Someone has to take care of it. If you don't delegate it to someone else (your hardware vendor, the neighbourhood geek or something), you need to take care of it yourself.

It's just a fact of life.

two words:

[hummassa]

"mere aggregation".
Read the GPL. Things are not black and white as you are construing them to be.

ubuntu missing APT pdiff??

[mennucc1]

Only problem with the refreshing of the repositories is that each time you refresh them, you need to download 5 MBs of data (that's with the restricted and multiverse repositories enabled)

That is peculiar. APT introduced pdiff downloading long ago (in "experimental", in Debian); then in May 2006, in version 0.6.44, apt pdiff support from experimental was merged in the unstable version: so this feature will be available in Debian Etch. If Ubuntu Feisty is shipping a reasonably new APT, all they need to do is to start generating the appropriate pdiffs in their repository.... and no more 5MBs download.

Re:ubuntu missing APT pdiff??

[Anonymous Coward]

pdiff is not needed for development versions of ubuntu, since you have to download like 400MB of updates per week anyway if you want to stay uptodate. And releaseversions only download the update-packagelists which are like ~300K.

So, in other words, those pre-release version are unsuitable for non-broadband users.

Re:Windows user won't switch without pain or epiph

[LingNoi]

OK now I understand what you mean. As for the differences I don't really know since I am not really a hardcore word processor kind of guy. For me both Office products are just white boxes you can put text and pictures into.

A lot of people complain about the UI of OpenOffice and I would be surprised if they weren't working on it. I think the biggest complaint is that it doesn't have the same consistent UI feel as other applications on the users system. This goes for Linux, Windows and the Mac I believe.

I just wonder if in a few years we're not back at the same stage.. "If only OpenOffice looked like word 2007, etc..".

When we stop hearing this about Linux...

[cenonce]

... the Average User ("AU") will start adopting it. This really should be the goal of Linux now that it is well into its teens. Time to stop being a geek-only, tinkerer OS and streamline the process. Now, admittedly, this is a beta... but I have dealt with these problems in all kinds of final Linux distros over the years. With that in mind, I am not so inspired by this review. Consider the following from the article:

By manually entering the vertical and horizontal sync in the xorg.conf file it fixed the problem for my 1440x900 screen and I was able to load the LiveCD and finally install Feisty on the hard drive.

Fortunately, I have not had to do this since about Slackware 8 or 9 (and that was on an old 486 Dell). Even then, it was NOT fun. You will not get a mom to edit xorg.conf. You will not get your typical manager/supervisor to edit xorg.conf. You will get them, however, to call the MCSE tech to fix a driver issue in Windows or a problem with Exchange.

...the bootloader should be installed it could use some friendlier "names" rather than just (hd0,0)...

The AU doesn't know hd0,0 from eth1 from lpt. Why even have these as default names if you want the AU to know what it is? It is intimidating for an AU to decipher tech names for hardware. They just want to see "Wireless" and know that is what they configure to hook up at the local coffee shop.

I would personally go with AIXGL and Beryl instead of the slower-evolving Compiz (after re-writing Beryl's pref panels of course to be more humane/sane)

What is a resistance to a consistent interface and making things look at least somewhat like Windows by default in the Linux community? It always seemed to me that consistency and a default Windows look and feel would encourage AU adoption. Looking at the desktop of a Linux distro for the first time is like getting into a car with the break/accelerator pedals reversed and the radio and other interior controls located on the door. Let's get some consistency and start it up looking like Windows so the AU can find everything. Then let them move everything around!

I manually installed libdvdcss Yeesh! Never happen with an AU... and an AU would never adopt an OS they couldn't just watch a DVD (or rip an MP3 or whatever) from first boot.

I had to blacklist the BCM43xx driver before I could successfully install ndiswrapper and finally get WiFi support. Again, see "manual installation" issue above.

There were very few the times that I had to pop to the terminal to carry out an important action.

This should be a "never" for AU adoption. Geeks want to run everything from the terminal, moms, wives and bosses do not.

I am 33 years old and I just don't have the same energy as I used to to deal with stupid issues that they should not be there, or with removal or non-development of conveniences for no good reason.

Isn't this what ALL computer users want!?!

I am 35 and I write this on a T23 with Ubuntu Edgy Eft installed. Five or six years ago I would have spent hours getting Linux installed on a machine b/c I liked the challenge. Now, I have enough to do without fighting over all the stuff mentioned in this article (and hey for Edgy Eft on the T23, wireless was the only real difficult thing)! AUs of all ages are the same way with maybe the younger ones have slightly more intestinal fortitude to configure Linux under the hood.

My hope is that they clean this up in beta and Feisty installs as (more or less) easily as Edgy did for me, but this is not an article that inspires me to believe the Feisty is a transformative release for purposes of Average User adoption.

Re:When we stop hearing this about Linux...

[Vexorian]

Do you notice that all those config things, are stuff the AU doesn't even know about? My mom still uses 800x600 as resolution, certainly doesn't know what resolution is (In fact, when I increased hers she complained because stuff was small and she couldn't read) . And she never heard of 'installing drivers' Fact is the AU needs a lot of help in windows even to play DVDs (specially to play DVDs now that everything is moving to that DRM crap). In fact, the AU still has a lot of issues in windows with stuff like 'Copying files' or Decompressing files, seriously. I know this because I used to distribute tools for game editing...

But yes, it is still a beta. I for one would like to thank God for letting the ubuntu people choose blue for active colors, the orange toned edgy blows, seriously. This is perhaps the most beatiful screenshot I've seen of a default gnome distro.

Re:When we stop hearing this about Linux...

[petrus4]

... the Average User ("AU") will start adopting it. This really should be the goal of Linux now that it is well into its teens. Time to stop being a geek-only, tinkerer OS and streamline the process.

Why? Vista still exists. If you want Windows, use Windows. Linux isn't Windows. It's an entirely different OS. Nobody's forcing you to use Linux, either. If you want Windows, it's still there for you. Use it and enjoy it, and allow Linux to be itself, rather than insist that it become something it isn't.

If a free (as in beer) copy of Windows is something you want, download a cracked copy of XP from the Pirate Bay. (and realise the legal consequences of doing so are entirely on your own head)

If the evil behaviour of Microsoft is something you're having a problem with, and you want Linux to become a Windows clone purely in order to be able to escape that, maybe what you need to realise is that given human nature, a company that make a product that does as much for you as Windows does are also entirely logically and naturally going to want to dominate other areas of your life as well...hence, the only way to really escape that is to voluntarily become more self-responsible...which would mean using Linux as is.

What is a resistance to a consistent interface and making things look at least somewhat like Windows by default in the Linux community?

See above. Do you want Windows? Use Windows. Stop wanting to turn Linux into Windows, because in wanting that, all you'll really accomplish is to destroy Linux.

Yeesh! Never happen with an AU... and an AU would never adopt an OS they couldn't just watch a DVD (or rip an MP3 or whatever) from first boot.

AUs don't need to use Linux. (Are you getting the message yet?) They can use Windows. Have fun with Vista.

Also...DVD and mp3 codecs are used as competitive weapons by Microsoft. (and to a lesser extent, Apple) If you've got a problem with them not having been installed with Ubuntu by default, take it up with them. That issue is not the fault of anybody associated with Linux.

This should be a "never" for AU adoption. Geeks want to run everything from the terminal, moms, wives and bosses do not.

You already know what I'm going to say in response to this by now surely, don't you?

Now, I have enough to do without fighting over all the stuff mentioned in this article (and hey for Edgy Eft on the T23, wireless was the only real difficult thing)!

Then I guess at 35...

"The Wow starts now." ;-)

Re:When we stop hearing this about Linux...

[Trelane]

Mod parent up! As a Linux user, the members of the community represented by the grandparent are what give us the bad reputation. There's reasonable middle ground (no, you can't expect Linux to be 100% like Windows), but neither should one have to go through unneeded pain (xorg config file modifiation) either. [It should also be noted that Windows zealots have similar members of their community, so it's not just the Linux community, although we have the reputation for it. :[

Good news, however. Xorg 7.3 will be moving toward a configless (and dynamic screen plugging) system, although hardware that lies to you (unfortunately way too much of the hardware out there) will still be a problem for some time to come. :(

Re:When we stop hearing this about Linux...

[cenonce]

This is not the first time I have posted about making Linux more user-friendly to the average user and gotten this response.

I get the sense that Linux developers want Linux to be competitive vis-a-vis Windows as long as they don't have to cater to the masses and they can keep it an OS for tinkerers. If you suggest that people who don't want to "struggle" with getting Linux installed and configured just go and use Windows, then I don't think it is fair to complain about the following:

(1) Complain when Sober brings the Internet to a crawl because of all of the bot-infected Windows machines in homes and on corporate networks - all of those AU's can't get the X window environment to work to even install Linux - which would eliminate the problem.

(2) Complain when your mom's anti-virus and spyware software slows the computer to a crawl and she asks you to fix it - she is just using Windows b/c she can't install and maintain Linux.

(3) Complain that Apple's DRM sucks b/c you can't play an iTunes download in Linux - average users can't install Linux to broaden the base so Apple may release iTunes for Linux.

(4) Complain when your bank gets hacked into because MS was willing to provide real support to their crappy server software - From the bank's perspective, it was easier to hire an MCSE guy to deal with the problems of Windows then to be constantly told to RTFM, an attitude pervasive in the open-source community and contrary to notions of customer service in a closed source environment.

You have missed my point if you think I am advocating that Linux becomes Windows. I suggested that if Linux wants to become more mainstream and convert average users that it might want to make that transition more seamless than what it currently is by making its initial interface with the user (i.e., the Desktop) more standard and familiar (call it Windows-like if you wish). It is what 90% of the world is familiar with on some level. Not attempting to attract that customer base is like opening a coffee shop and only serving $4 lattes when everybody wants a regular old cup o' Joe!

As much as the no-choice option of Windows gives you poor security and poor performance, the opposite occurs when you can't get Linux to set standards for what the desktop experience will be like, but it leaves it to distros and unregulated projects. That's fine if you want Linux to continue to be a minority OS for server-room grease monkeys, but the guerrilla war against the Borg known as Microsoft is and has been at a stalemate for a number of years. In my opinion, that is because Linux, not Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, Fedora Core or [insert distro name here], is not willing to set some standards for universal adoption of a desktop experience.

Re:When we stop hearing this about Linux...

[miro f]

no offense, but most of these "required tasks" are crap.

The AU doesn't know hd0,0 from eth1 from lpt. Why even have these as default names if you want the AU to know what it is? It is intimidating for an AU to decipher tech names for hardware. They just want to see "Wireless" and know that is what they configure to hook up at the local coffee shop.

this stuff is hidden from the user. Notice that the reviewer was talking about "advanced bootloader settings". What the hell would your AU be doing looking in there? eth0? Network Manager hides the fact that you even have multiple network cards, it just connects to the network magically. lpt? heh, that exists on windows as well...

What is a resistance to a consistent interface and making things look at least somewhat like Windows by default in the Linux community? It always seemed to me that consistency and a default Windows look and feel would encourage AU adoption. Looking at the desktop of a Linux distro for the first time is like getting into a car with the break/accelerator pedals reversed and the radio and other interior controls located on the door. Let's get some consistency and start it up looking like Windows so the AU can find everything. Then let them move everything around!

No matter what you do, if your mythical AU is so resistant to change, then they'll use Windows anyway. People who are going to switch to Linux will do so not to get another windows clone.

If they really can't learn but don't want windows, get them to use Xandros or Linspire. Ubuntu isn't aimed at those users.

Yeesh! Never happen with an AU... and an AU would never adopt an OS they couldn't just watch a DVD (or rip an MP3 or whatever) from first boot.

this is the one thing I hear consistently from Windows users, but I have news for you: if AU wants to watch a DVD, they'll put it into their DVD player! The typical user doesn't even know that their PC can watch DVDs, and if they did, then they wouldn't care, because their TV has a bigger screen.

Again, see "manual installation" issue above.

this is an unfortunate situation, and won't be fixed without help from hardware vendors. However, most Average Users won't be installing linux themselves, this is what stops the somewhat technical users from installing. AU will stick with what they're given or else a tech who knows something will install it for them.

This should be a "never" for AU adoption. Geeks want to run everything from the terminal, moms, wives and bosses do not.

This is the biggest point you have, and I agree completely on this one. With xorg 7.3, this should be gone (in feisty+1). For now, install openSUSE and you will never have to drop to a terminal.

The truth is, your mythical average user won't switch because linux isn't good enough for them, They won't switch because Linux doesn't provide a significant advantage to get over the effort of switching. And as long as that's true, Windows will always have majority market share, due to inertia. And applications.

Re:When we stop hearing this about Linux...

[petrus4]

I suggested that if Linux wants to become more mainstream and convert average users that it might want to make that transition more seamless than what it currently is by making its initial interface with the user

How close to Windows do you mean? My point was actually not so much that user-friendliness is something that I have a problem with, but more that if we don't insist on the interface being identical to Windows, it might be possible to find an interface design that is actually even easier to use than Windows' has been. KDE has introduced a few interesting innovations in that regard, but they've only been able to do so by being unafraid to deviate from the Windows model somewhat.

the opposite occurs when you can't get Linux to set standards for what the desktop experience will be like, but it leaves it to distros and unregulated projects.

That is UNIX design philosophy. It has existed for a long time, and it exists for a valid reason. There's an explanation of that particular issue here if you're interested. The linked article is written by Jim Gettys, one of the principle designers of the X Window system, on which the Linux desktop is of course based.

Also, standards do exist, but nobody really adheres to that particular one anywayz because it incorporates a couple of fairly silly ideas. It also, now that I look at it, fairly egregiously violates the Single UNIX Specification.

the guerrilla war against the Borg known as Microsoft is and has been at a stalemate for a number of years.

Fear of Microsoft is used as a motivation for far too many things where Linux is concerned, IMHO. As Linus once said, fear and/or hatred are never motivations that produce good programming work.

Microsoft as a company are going to die purely due to their own missteps...it'll happen as naturally as the sun rising. That is not something which Linux users or developers need to continue to worry about, and we shouldn't.

It is being worked on.

[an.echte.trilingue]

They are working on it. I don't know if it will be in this release, but it is on the way. https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/bull et-proof-x/

PDF for Windows

[shani]

Now we were both busy at university and neither of us:

• Wanted to waste money on a PDF converter for MS Word.
  
• Had time to look for a free one for MS Word.
  

I use OpenOffice, mostly under Linux, so I see where you're coming from. But, honestly, the laziness that you are implying is just too fucking much.

The first hit after googling for "windows pdf" is PDFCreator, a GPL program that lets you make PDFs from any Windows program.

Sorry that you weren't willing to spend 60 seconds on this... you must be really, really, REALLY busy. Too busy to read this comment, of course!

Re:PDF for Windows

[LingNoi]

Well done you found the magic google search terms. When someone needs a "Microsoft Word PDF exporter" the first thing they type is "windows" yes thats exactly what I was thinking at the time... or not.

Of course what I actually googled was "microsoft word pdf" ( yes I did spend time googling it. I wasn't lazy at all that you made out. ) and what came out in January 2006?

Pay for PDF conversion, pay for PDF conversion, pay, pay, pay. Since open office was the only PDF converter I knew of thats what we did. If I knew this program even existed I would have used it.

Your comments are nothing but insulting since I looked as best as I could and got crap. :(

Re:the answer to your question is

[teh kurisu]

Oh, it is? I just go to the "screen resolution" menu and chose one of literally 40 options, and it changes the resolution for me. I haven't done anything special to allow this, and I didn't specially chose my hardware for linux.

I'm not going to contradict this, but I think you were lucky. When I first installed Ubuntu (6.06 at the time I think), I had to tinker with xorg.conf before this menu would show anything other than '640x480'. Same for a classmate of mine who was trying his hardest to switch to Linux but still needed hand-holding along the way because of this kind of problem.

But anyway, my original point was that people expect to start up linux for the first time and for it to be as easy to use as windows. Of COURSE it wont be as easy to use as windows because you have 7+ years experience using windows, and 1 hour experience using linux.

Being able to navigate the main menu and find the 'Screen resolution' setting is one of those fundamental transferable skills that any reasonably competent Windows user would manage without much bother. Knowing what to do when the menu gives you none of the options you would reasonably expect is not.

Re:AverTV Card

[VoltageX]

Since when was any Linux distro easy to use? I have to recompile my kernel to get my TV card to work, and even then it's sketchy. The year of Linux will be when all hardware manufacturers release SOURCE for their drivers - AverTV released binary drivers, but they're no use to me. The card is an AverTV Hybrid PCI DVB card if anyone knows how to get it working, by the way.

Re:Can Feisty be installed, though?

[mgiuca]

Sounds nasty. But it may have more to do with your burner or burning software (at least in the first case - if it crashes while burning it can not be the fault of the file you're trying to burn).

You're better off asking for help on the Ubuntu forums than on Slashdot.

Re:problems with ubuntu

[3seas]

Right, following recommended partition sizes with a little more for growth.
The point of the fat32 was as I said, to allow file transfer between window and linux.
The home partition was to try and deal with experience in having to lose my data when upgrading on various default installs.

There was nothing fancy I did with these, as the minumum was stated and I was even presented with a list of common partition possibilities, consistant with linux installs.

I simply did not want to put it all on one partition, neither does most any admin.

Other than partition choice above it was all a default install.

If there are hardware issues that require having the perfect hardware than I must have missed something as I thought development was done world wide and very NOT likely to have the same hardware for all Devs.

Its interesting how the blame is always put first on the user or something other then where the cause really is, which only adds to the user frustration level.

All in all, I'd say the post this is a response to is more a flame than intent to try and understand so that can be improved.

The partition software is not ubuntu specific, but perhaps how ubuntu uses the information is.
I only know that the partitions were not used as I defined them. Perhaps there was some assignment failure in some script.... I only know it didn't work right.

Re:Windows user won't switch without pain or epiph

[larytet]

while i generally agree, that Ubuntu (and Linux desktops) require more work the situation with security in the MS Windows IS unbearable. About two years ago I said to myself that I am done with the firewalls/antiviruses and inability to browse the NET (or playing a video) without risk to turn my box into bot.

My point is that the security situation in the Windows world is already unbearable and is going to remain this way for some time.

Look at Feisty then.

[Chas]

I have the exact same wireless card you do.

I dicked around with WPA on my local network under 6.06 and 6.10.

With Feisty, it just works. Straight out. And connecting to an AP, regardless of type, is as simple as choosing the AP and clicking on it.

new user

[40ozFreak]

I'm looking forward to the new version to possibly sort a couple of bugs plaguing me. I'm a recently converted, long time Windows user, and was very intimidated by other distros and their overwhelming sense of complexity, sometimes needlessly so. Ubuntu was a good fit for me with a combination of control and user-friendliness.

Powermanagement?

[VON-MAN]

If you've got powermanagement running, check your processor speeds with cpufreq-info.

Re:Powermanagement?

[VON-MAN]

Hmmm, scrap that. Your powermanagement is probably userspace.

Re:Powermanagement?

[Cheapy]

Also, cpufreq-info has "command not found" when typed in.

Re:More Evidence

[petrus4]

2. Linux is NOT getting there and will NEVER get there so chill out.

I strongly disagree. As long as you avoid unsupported hardware, (which is extremely easy to do) Ubuntu's level of maturity is becoming genuinely amazing. Have you actually used it?

Install Edgy Eft with Beryl, VLC, and the multimedia codecs from Automatix2. Then after you've used it for a few days, get back to me about how backward Linux still is. ;-)

Re:Ubuntu is hard

[petrus4]

Which version of Ubuntu was this? I've installed both Dapper and Edgy and they did this automatically.

Are you serious about "this Linux" thing?

[WED Fan]

Gem from a comments list attached to this article:

You are kidding arent you ?

Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?

That sounds preposterous to me.

If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.

Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft.

Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible.

I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.

So, apparently, like man-caused-global-warming, the discussion about Linux is closed.

Re:Are you serious about "this Linux" thing?

[F452]

I didn't RTFA. It's hard for me to tell if that comment is serious or not. It has to be intended as a joke, right? If so, it's pretty funny. If meant serious... it's also pretty damn funny. And deliciously mind-exploding in its ignorance. But it has to be a joke, and not even that subtle of one, right? Right?! :-)

Re:Are you serious about "this Linux" thing?

[zsau]

It doesn't look like a joke. Here it is in context. Inconceivable!

Re:More desktop - yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I run blackbox on my windows machine. Though, I can do have other options, too, such as Xoblite (a blackbox fork), LiteStep, or Aston, which I find consumes even less memory (abouy 3-4 mb worth), while giving me fancy plugins, transparency, and all that fun stuff. Hell, even GNUstep/Etoile does windows. And I'm pretty sure I've seen WindowMaker ports, as well.

Oh, yes, and you can also strip down windows by either hacking up the registry, or using fancy third-party Frontends. I recall sliming 9x to a 45mb install, and XP to about 1-200mb, by stripping out unecessary components and services (e.g. Outlook, Mediaplayer, explorer, etc). I haven't tried Vista as of yet, nor do I intend to in the near future, but I know that many of the alternate WMs havebeen ported.

Really, I'm trying hard, but I can't quite seem to get your point. Windows has had the option to swap outthe default explorer shell in favour of another, since NT4, and the process is painless. So, with that in mind, if your criticism is a fair one, would it not be just as fair to argue that Ubuntu is bloated because it installs Gnome by default?

Of course it isn't, you can't, however, have it both ways.

FWI: I'm not fanboying, but I do use a Windows desktop alongside my Unix boxen boxen, and I realise that each has their strengths and weaknesses, each their uses, and not one is unilaterally "better" than the other in all respects.

Re:My experience with 6.10 (It's the preinstall!)

[quixote9]

Matt Edd's issues are real. Windows is PRE-INSTALLED. That's why it doesn't have them. That's also why Microsoft fights like Godzilla to keep any other OS from being pre-installed. If people had to do their own installs of Windows (any version), the whole world would already be using Ubuntu, even with the well-documented problems for new users (manual edits of some config files and the like).

There's no point carping that such and such is "not a *nix problem" or "is a closed-source driver problem." Only we care. Lots of people out there want it to just work. Where we should be directing our energies is getting anti-monopoly laws applied to OEMs who won't provide specs so that drivers can be written, and to companies who kill people when they pre-install anyone else's OS.

An easier way

[an.echte.trilingue]

An easier way would be to install bootchart, boot a couple or three times plugged in, boot a couple or three times from battery, and then compare the charts to see what is taking longer to load (assuming that there is still a difference).

So Eugenia is a pirate?

[MaXMC]

Check out her first screenshot http://www.osnews.com/img/17505/feisty1.png
Unless she's figured out a way to get the file from iTunes into Linux I bet she's downloaded that Lost episode.

Will It Run on My Mac?

[reallocate]

My guess is that it won't run on my Mac. I've used, and appreciated, Ubuntu. I'm using a late-model PPC iMac, which I bought thinking that I'd use it to run Linux when Apple moved on. Now, it looks like that's not going to happen, as some developers can't be bothered to figure out how to control the fans.

Re:Will It Run on My Mac?

[Shadyman]

Have you tried Feisty? Have you submitted a bug on Ubuntu's bug tracker? Just curious.

Re:Will It Run on My Mac?

[reallocate]

I think I tried Fiesty. It's been a few months. However, as I understand it, the Ubuntu folks have decided to not provide releases for PPC Macs. This is a particular problem for people with late-model PPC iMacs, because their thermal control code (the fans) differs from earlier models. The result: the fans run at full speed, all the time.

Re:More Evidence

[Constantine XVI]

Or just install Feisty (it's mostly stable), use compiz if you must, vlc, and let Feisty install the codecs for you.

Re:Ubuntu is hard

[broomer]

Just try the 'Kubuntu' version....
Thats Ubuntu but with KDE instead of Gnome
And last week I tried KDE and I was lost too, with my 15 month Gnome experience.

The (ubuntu gnome) disk-management has recently been moved from system/administration to applications/system_tools

Re:My experience with 6.10 (It's the preinstall!)

[Matt Edd]

Actually I built my own computer and had to install windows myself. There was some driver updating to be done but it still basically worked out of the "box" and the few things I had to do by hand was a matter of finding the .exe file on the mfg website. I'm not saying that Ubuntu should be as easy or that it sucks because I had to do work. I'm just saying I am a busy person and don't have time to learn everything. After finding a website about the xorg file (and corrupting it a few times) I at least learned something.... but decided to go back to windows for the time being.

To be fair, I needed to plug a wired keyboard to boot into windows from grub and my rabbit chewed though the wire while my back was turned. That and I had a fight with my gf and it was 2am. All I wanted was my computer to go back to booting windows automatically and silently. When I have time I will go back and play with it.

And thanks to robinvanleeuwen for the posts. I'll look closer at them when I have time.

You don't have to do this.

[an.echte.trilingue]

... he writes in response to an article saying that there is finally a distribution you don't have to tweak :)

That is funny and insightful.

I agree that the article is overzealous in its estimation of how easy Ubuntu is, but I think that that is because people in general are looking for an "easy button" that will prevent them from having to learn anything about their computers. I think a better statement would be that Linux now requires the same amount or less tweaking than Windows (which for some reason is the stick against which all is measured in home computing). Windows is no better as far as slowdown over time is concerned; did you see the discussion in this very same thread about this topic? Its here:

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=226973&c id=18383893/

I would argue that Ubuntu's solution is clearly superior to the Windows solution, which appears to be to reinstall your operating system. Of course, I know how to find solutions to Linux problems and I don't know much about Windows, and people who know about Windows but not Linux probably have the opposite opinion.

However, I think that it bears noting that my tip is in no way required, the system functions fine without it, just slower. Just because you don't HAVE to tweak Ubuntu doesn't mean you should not be ABLE to tweak it.

Take care

-mat

Too mature?

[stim]

I recently installed feisty fawn to take a look, what I found disturbed me greatly. From install to finish I never had to touch a terminal. I got my 3d drivers, aixgl and video codecs working all in the comfort of a gui. This is unacceptable to me! If i don't have to edit my fstab, apt, or xorg config files, how will i look super smart to someone sitting over my shoulder? I switched from windows so that I would look smart dammit!

Re:Too mature?

[strider44]

The other day we installed a printer in our office. When setting it up on my laptop under ubuntu edgy it took five clicks. One of these clicks was clicking the "print" key in openoffice.

When my colleague tried to print from his own ubuntu box I mentioned how it was depressingly easy and really took the fun out of things. Ten seconds later he mentioned "damn, you're right".

Is it bad that I miss doing manual configurations and downloading and compiling patches?

Re:Too mature?

[SevenHands]

I know what we can do. We can create a new operating system. We should call it stridix. It will be, well, like unix.

Re:I'm sure I'm not alone

[LocoMan]

One difference, though (from what I've seen at least) is that those names get lost once the product arrives, while in the forums I still see most people calling different ubuntu versions "edgy", "dapper" and so on (I usually have a hard time when searching on the ubuntu forums to know which version is the one I have installed and which is the latest). Not trying to troll here, though (and I'd add the regular "posting here from an ubuntu computer" if I was at home, but since I'm at work, posting from OSX then.. :) )

To paraphrase Mr MonkeyBoy.

[haeger]

Applications! Applications! Applications! Applications! Applications!

Most people I know don't care at all about what OS they're running. Not one bit. That's something that we here at slashdot do. Most people will choose the OS that has the applications that they need. 90% of the time that's windows.

Let me go through the usual "selling points" of Linux and their typical response from a normal user.

Linux evangelist: "Linux is free"
Normal user: "So?"

Linux evangelist: "Linux is more secure"
Normal user: "So?"

Linux evangelist: "Linux is faster"
Normal user: "So?"

Normal user: "Does it run application X that I use?"
Linux evangelist: "Well, sort of, and if you combine this app with that and do this random hack then....." by which time the normal user have stopped listening.

In my humble opinion KDE4 is a great step in the right direction for Linux. In KDE4 (from what I understand) there shouldn't be any problems recompiling things for windows. This means that we can first hook them on free, secure, fast applications, and by doing that we have lowered the threshold for them to come over to our free, secure, fast platform.

.haeger

Re:To paraphrase Mr MonkeyBoy.

[Oriumpor]

Too literal a response. Just say, "Yeah but, it's called $oss-packagename." The end user for the most part doesn't care. If "Linux can't do it" then it can't do it. The fact that there are 123123551 alternatives never hit their ears because they use software titles and functions interchangeably. If they're smart enough to know the difference you can explain it, but otherwise it's just becomes semantics.

3d desktops are a waste of ... everything

[fudgefactor7]

I would personally go with AIXGL and Beryl instead of the slower-evolving Compiz (after re-writing Beryl's pref panels of course to be more humane/sane).
 
Compiz/Beryl/AIXGL all really serve no purpose other than slow your system down to a crawl, introduce instability, and waste your time. I played around with them and see no benefit other than the "Whee, look at the cube!" which is boring as hell in about 5 seconds. So, can anyone actually tell me what's the point?

Re:3d desktops are a waste of ... everything

[miro f]

my computer is much snappier when using beryl, offloading the rendering to the video card is a real performance boost. It actually uses less battery too (!)

some of the plugins are useful, zoom helps when I'm teaching in a room without a projector, I can show them what's on the screen by zooming, scale is incredibly useful for finding lost windows, switcher, put, etc are all useful. Now for some reason windows feel less 'real' if they don't wobble =).

My girlfriend didn't use workspaces at all until they were on a cube, and then she's like "oh, I get it now!"

so it does have use as more than just eyecandy. I generally keep the eyecandy set to an absolute minimum and it's improved my working quite dramatically

Re:3d desktops are a waste of ... everything

[wilec]

"So, can anyone actually tell me what's the point?"

I don't disagree with your base observation that a lot of the stuff on newer desktops interfaces, 3D & 2D are more about eye candy and less about useful features. However I have found some of the eye candy to be really useful as well. I have been using use Beryl on openSuse for a while now and have some observations on this matters. For one thing I check the openSuse section on Beryls forum every weekend for news on the latest snapshot versions, and install the ones that seem stable, which lately has been pretty much all of them. I have found a lot of the more annoying performance and important feature issues in stable releases are usually fixed in the snapshots. As for the features I have found useful:

The "input zoom" function has been very handy, being able to zoom in and still have functional controls is nice.

The "thumbnail previews" of windows on the taskbar works so well that I prefer it to the desktop pager.

The "application switcher" and the "scale" features usefulness sure beat the heck out of a window list.

I keep a lot of stuff open sometimes and use the "cube" as a 16 sided ring that I find makes it very easy to flip between view ports with my mouse wheel or to zoom out rotate and pick one. A pager with 16 desktops would be a pain to use.

The group & tab feature seems like it is going to be the feature I have been wanting for sometime now as soon as I take the time to learn it and assign the application windows.

The per window transparency adjustment, mouse wheel and alt key makes it easy take a quick peek behind the current window and flip back quickly.

The time variable opacify on loss of focus feature for windows helps reduce distractions where I have several windows in one view port.

The "negative" feature sure helps with eyestrain and with poorly designed web pages.

The "annotate" feature has been useful in quickly showing others what I mean about a specific item, both in Linux itself or in web pages and documents or in some of the CAD/CAM design tools I use.

I know some of these features have counter parts that are not part of Beryl, but they are still of the same design intent and carry a similar overhead. I realize a lot of these features are keyboard shortcut intensive, but this something I have long been used to anyway. It may be that I put more importance than some on how something looks, but I find a good looking desktop on my PC is almost as important to me aesthetically as my custom built oak desk and cabinets are. I mean do you still like to use applications that use the CDE toolbox? Is your physical desk made of concrete blocks, milk crates and 2x8's, well my has been in the past too, but do you like it that way?

Finer things always come with a price, I also like to have a good looking woman on my arm, and you can't tell me there is no overhead cost there. Besides all this the "Damn, what, what did you just do? Cool, how much does this 3D stuff cost? Does it run on XP?" reactions I get from Windows users are just priceless.

Wabi-Sabi
matthew

Solution: Share an ext3 partition like /home

[Jeff Carr]

I used to have that issue as well. Not to mention disk space issues on my laptop due to 5 partions (swap,/,/home,/mnt/shared/,windows,).

Now instead of sharing a fat32 partion, I share my /home partion using FS Driver an EXT2 file system driver for windows. (naturally compatible of course with ext3)

Solved many, many annoyances for me. I highly recommend it.

Re:Solution: Share an ext3 partition like /home

[Teun]

The FS driver is a great tool, at least just as great is ntfs-3g, it allows write access to your ntfs partition and it's part of the Feisty repositories so it's a no-brainer to install.

Re:Solution: Share an ext3 partition like /home

[miro f]

I use both and this way I can access any file read/write no matter where it is on my system from both windows and linux.

No need to even think about sharing files any more thanks to those two tools

Re:Solution: Share an ext3 partition like /home

[Master of Transhuman]

Yes, I've seen that FS Driver. I need to look into installing it on my Windows side and testing it. I'm just scared of screwing up my Linux partitions from Windows. I installed my Windows XP on FAT32 just to be sure I wouldn't screw up an NTFS partition by writing to it from Linux. Even though the ntfs-ng system is now supposedly safe, I still am nervous about a driver that occasionally refuses to complete an operation because it might corrupt the file system if it did do the operation.

But I should install both and test them anyway. Or go beyond that and just up my RAM and convert my XP into a VM running under VMware Server...

I've got over 200GB of stuff in FAT32 partitions plus the Linux stuff (all backed up for the most part except for very new stuff), so I'm a little more paranoid about file system security than I would be if I only had 20GB of stuff. I had a nightmare issue when my previous Windows 2000/XP/Linux triple boot hosed the partition table due to a Windows 2000 bug a year or two ago, and I'd prefer not to have to reinstall everything AND spend a day or two restoring data from DVDs - especially when I need this machine to do contracted client support.

Re:Solution: Share an ext3 partition like /home

[Jeff Carr]

I've had very good luck with the driver. I've even run the same databases (development, not production) out of my ext3 partition under both windows and linux and had no problems. I'm not saying you couldn't have any problems, I rarely use Windows these days, except to reluctantly support a couple of old Access databases I've built.

However, I'm not all that paranoid about file systems admittedly (I trust in my backups instead) and do things like mount remote servers using ssh and samba as folders that I use probably too casually.

Kubuntu Feisty on a brand new ASUS laptop

[Micah]

Might as well put in a plug for those of you looking for butt-kicking Linux laptop setups.

I just ordered this rebranded ASUS Z84JP and immediately installed Kubuntu Feisty Herd 5 on it.

I am very happy with the result. With very little tweaking, it recognized everything I care about:

* Firewire -- I've captured DV video with it
* eSATA -- ordered a SATA-2 drive and an Icy Dock enclosure from Newegg. It's twice as fast as the internal drive and huge, perfect for video editing
* 3D -- glxgears gives over 5000 fps, only drawback is the proprietary kernel module
* Bluetooth
* Sound
* Standard stuff -- DVD, USB, etc

Haven't yet tried the camera or external video output.

I think Herd 5 is already very close to production quality, but I had a scare when updating with Adept. Fortunately it got worked out. When it is truly final I will be heavily promoting Feisty to friends. :)

Re:Kubuntu Feisty on a brand new ASUS laptop

[mdm-adph]

"We live to serve Him, and you!"

Ugh. Was starting to dig that site until I saw that.

Re:Kubuntu Feisty on a brand new ASUS laptop

[Micah]

Suit yourself. But that store is ranked virtually perfectly on resellerratings. I as a customer am as happy as everyone who has commented there.

Re:Kubuntu Feisty on a brand new ASUS laptop

[mdm-adph]

wait a sec -- you're a christian, who speaks rationally, and is an open-source advocate... hang on, I need to go sit down. :P

Usability Labs

[justthinkit]

The problem is that there is a group of developers and a few end users who are so out of touch with anyone outside the technology field that they are working under the assumption that everyone has the same basic skill that they do.

Microsoft formed their Usability Labs for exactly this reason. Perhaps these guys can work together on something like this?

And games.

[antdude]

And games ported natively to Linux with no feature and performance losses.

Feisty fawn

[HomelessInLaJolla]

I was hoping for Cheeky Koala.

In case anybody is interested...

[Salsaman]

LiVES is already ported to Feisty:

http://www.getdeb.net/release.php?id=470

Nothing to see here

[gfody]

Debian has a pretty installer now.. there's no need for this whole Ubuntu thing anymore.

Ubuntu's working like a charm!

[jmvbxx]

Am I the odd man out? Believe me, I am less of a nerd than I want to be but I have been an Ubuntu user for over three years without any major problems. I don't even have a dual boot anymore because I simply expect Ubuntu to do anything I need. I have used various digital cameras without issue, my wife's ipod and a new printer that I picked up at a big box store. Whenever I have run into problems I have been able to find solutions or suggestions on the web and I can proudly say that I've even posted a few responses and suggestions of my own now. In all honesty I can't image ever returning to M$. I'm very happy where I am!!!

Re:Windows user won't switch without pain or epiph

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

here is an /etc/network/interfaces entry for WPA which worked
for me on Ubuntu Edgy Eft, and Debian Etch.

iface eth2 inet dhcp
                                wpa-driver wext
                                wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
                                wpa-group TKIP
                                wpa-ssid yourSSID
                                wpa-psk 61599e462342933eae6ec3c478d15ec2551cae5591123cc837 2617abvc9113

Re:I'm sure I'm not alone

[miro f]

the only thing that this anecdotal evidence shows is that people like the codenames and tend to stick with them =)

Re:Can Feisty be installed, though?

[miro f]

try the ubuntu install.exe

no need to burn a CD at all.

WHY?!

[armanox]

WHY???

I personally do not agree with making Open Office more like MS Office. That's why I never liked StarOffice - it was too like MS Office. I remember using Word Perfect 5.1 under DOS, that was nothing like MS Office. But I know more people that could use all of its features then can all of MS Office's. The only problem me or any member of my Linux group has seen with OpenOffice is that it fails to import equations correctly. Office 2007 has some nice improvements over Office 03, yet nobody says make Open Office more like Office 07. Try the new equation editor in 07. Or just try 07 for a while. It beats Office 03 any day

With that said, I currently run Linux on a P3 Dell, my laptop (1.7GHz Celeron), my Desktop (1.7GHz P4), and my Linux Groups SGI Octane (Dual MIPS64). All of the i386 machines use Open Office under Linux. My Mac (OS8.6, PPC 603rev3) uses MS Office 98 and AppleWorks 6. My laptop also runs Windows XP (and the Vista Beta until I purged at the beginning of the month) with Office 07. My desktop also has XP Pro under which I have Office 03 and Open Office 2.1. My emergency system (22MHz i486 SX), running DOS 6.22 with Windows for Workgroups 3.11, uses Word Perfect 5.1 and MS Word 6.0.

It's good for noobs

[ghostbar38]

There's no doubt, for people trying to migrate to Linux too, but just at user-level, never for server-level or company...

Here's the response I just posted on the site

[Master of Transhuman]

What's wrong with this picture?

"I needed to have more information for my laptop's LCD. By manually entering the vertical and horizontal sync in the xorg.conf file it fixed the problem for my 1440x900 screen and I was able to load the LiveCD and finally install Feisty on the hard drive."

"Compiz is now part of Ubuntu although turned off by default because it still has major problems."

"installing new apps is now a breeze. Although Ubuntu has 5 GUI applications that are package-related and that can create some confusion..."

"I manually installed libdvdcss because this is not included in the restricted list and Totem now refuses to playback any DVD if you try to load it via Totem's menu"

"Please note that Ubuntu mistakenly loads the BCM43xx driver for my Broadcomm/Dell 1390 WiFi card and that resulted in a lot of errors in the terminal by the system (missing firmware?). I had to blacklist the BCM43xx driver before I could successfully install ndiswrapper and finally get WiFi support. [Update: I installed the bcm43xx-cutter package and installed the required firmware and WiFi now works with the open source driver which unfortunately is not stable (I lose connection after a minute or so)"

"Another fine moment is that Ubuntu supports suspend-to-RAM (sleep) on my laptop out of the box, although I noticed that once every 5-6 wake ups some stuff can get screwy (e.g. X dying, network card not responding etc)"

"There were very few the times that I had to pop to the terminal to carry out an important action."

"Some of these problems include: the i810 driver would not playback HD video (Xv crashing) if I would not add the Cachelines option in the Xorg.conf, copy/paste from Firefox does not work if Firefox is then closed down (this was fixed last year for Gnome apps, time to fix Firefox too), Gossip does not connect to anything else but jabber.org (e.g. no gtalk), digicam's RAW files open by default with the wrong applications (only Cinepaint and UFRaw can handle these but they are not set as defaults for the RAW mime types), I have bad AC97 "scratchy" sound with most SDL games (e.g. Neverball, LTris etc), Bluetooth would not work at all here if you don't run "hcitool hci0 reset" before loading the service, there is no option in the gnome-mouse pref panel to disable tap-to-click on touchpads (gsynaptics is really buggy so I prefer to not mess with it), HAL is not built with libsmbios and so the new Gnome "brightness applet" does not support any DELL laptop, FFmpeg is built without AAC (so it's not possible to encode videos for my cellphone) etc. However, these are not problems that I can't live with or not find workarounds."

Excuse me, folks, but this is a litany of screwed up stuff nobody should have to tolerate on ANY OS - even Windows.

Why is it that the distros STILL do not have a database of every commonly used monitor with an effective method of detecting - or EVEN ASKING THE USER - to identify the monitor and installing the correct horizontal and vertical sync? I mean, I can understand it that my old ViewSonic 6 isn't detected properly in every distro, but the latest monitors? NOBODY can get the proper HV sync figures into the hardware database? C'mon!

Why does Ubuntu need FIVE package management programs? That is just ridiculous...I thought Fedora Core 5 was braindead for having TWO! What, we can't get ONE program to function properly, so we cover that up by installing FOUR MORE?

WHY is Totem, the least competent media player, the default? Why is Kaffeine demoted when it obviously can play encrypted DVDs without hosing itself just because libdvdcss is installed?

Why are so many obviously crippled and not ready for primetime packages being included in so many distros - like Compiz? Is it just because of "featuritis" inherited from Microsoft?

And we see that Wi-Fi and laptop hibernation STILL do not work properly? What is this, rocket science? Linux finally got the printer problem licked so that now you just select the printer and

Re:Here's the response I just posted on the site

[squidinkcalligraphy]

And we see that Wi-Fi and laptop hibernation STILL do not work properly? What is this, rocket science? Linux finally got the printer problem licked so that now you just select the printer and everything works with CUPS. Why can't the distros get a straightforward, automated way of installing WiFi support? It's not even a driver issue, since the drivers (if only through NDISWrapper) are there. It's the setup problem again - nothing is detected, the user isn't asked, so nothing works! This is ridiculous! Um, I'm running edgy and hibernation and wifi worked on my laptop straight up without any problems. For wifi, I had to install network-manager (now included in feisty by default). But I didn't have to do anything fancy at all, and now it autodetects my home network and my work network and connects automatically. Hell, wifi doesn't work properly in xp on the same machine (I had to switch to some IBM provided tool to get it working recently).

Re:Here's the response I just posted on the site

[Master of Transhuman]

Yes, SOME WiFi works fine. Ignore my hyperbole - the real problem remains that it isn't that easy for a lot of people. You got lucky because they included Network Manager - why? Because Wireless Assistant was crap - which they should have known before shipping Edgy with it.

Re:the answer to your question is

[Master of Transhuman]

We just discussed this here the other day.

In Kubuntu, if not Ubuntu apparently, you go to System Settings, Monitor and Display, and select your monitor, your driver, and your resolution.

It almost looks like the exact same dialog as Windows, except there are fewer tabs because the other stuff is set elsewhere. You even have the slider to set the resolution.

Again, this has nothing to do with LINUX per se - but with a distro that apparently didn't bother to copy the best way of doing this stuff as used in a dozen other distros or even Windows.

Dump Ubuntu. I'm coming to the conclusion that it is crap. Switch to Mandriva or Novell where you have a real control panel of one sort or another that lets you tweak stuff, instead of a dumbed down philosophy borrowed from Windows...

Re:My experience with 6.10 (It's the preinstall!)

[Chandon Seldon]

Finding an .exe file on the manufacturer's website is not innately easier than looking at http://help.ubuntu.com/ and following some simple instruction. When installing dual boot systems for people, the Windows side always takes me more effort because I have to scrabble around for drivers and apps rather than having everything easily available in the Ubuntu package repository.

Re:More desktop - yay?

[Master of Transhuman]

"Windows has had the option to swap outthe default explorer shell in favour of another, since NT4, and the process is painless."

Yeah, right. The one time I tried that back in 2002, nearly destroyed my Windows install...

"FWI: I'm not fanboying, but I do use a Windows desktop alongside my Unix boxen boxen"

The usual dead giveaway - Windows shill...

Re:But has it matured quickly enough?

[Master of Transhuman]

I agree - it hasn't.

It's not mature enough for naive newbie users or anybody using anything but a plain desktop with no add-on consumer hardware.

They don't have the manpower for adequate testing and bug resolution. And that's a killer for a distro being hyped for new users.

It took Mandriva YEARS to become usable for new users. It still has the best rep for being the easiest for new users.

Re:not quite ready

[Master of Transhuman]

While I don't agree that Windows is all THAT easy for anybody to use, I have to agree that wireless setup on Linux is ridiculous.

Linux got the printer problem mostly licked - you just select your printer and everything works under CUPS, just like in Windows.

They need to do the same thing for wireless. Knock off this nonsense about downloading NDISWrapper separately - INCLUDE NDISWrapper and every driver it supports in the default install whether wireless is detected or not. If the wireless is detected, but not identified properly, ASK THE USER, then go to the hardware database, pull out the drivers and firmware, set up the config files, and load up the wireless control utility and interact with the user in getting it to work. This isn't rocket science. All they have to do is the same crap Microsoft went through to get Zero Configuration Wireless working (when it does, anyway.)

Sure, there will still be problems with oddball wireless cards for which there are no drivers available under NDISWrapper. But there's no reason wireless setup has to be this hard on Linux for standard cards.

But the REAL problem is that distros would rather put their effort in Compiz and Beryl eye candy than in making really necessary hardware like wireless cards WORK out of the box.

It's not a LINUX problem - it's a DISTRO problem. Lack of adequate testing and manpower for bug resolution is another contributing factor.

Re:not quite ready

[Master of Transhuman]

You're undoubtedly correct that Linux APPS have a long way to go to match the more mature Windows apps.

However, that is not a commentary on LINUX the OS per se - merely a commentary on Linux's acceptance in the consumer marketplace. Although in fact, Linux the OS has the same problem - just less so since it HAS been around for fifteen years at this point - which is why it's become quite usable on the desktop AS a desktop. It has matured.

In some respects, it's clear that OSS development tends to be slower than commercial software development - undoubtedly due to the fact that many OSS developers have to do it in their spare time rather than eight hours a day or more while being paid. Plus OSS development is distributed - it's not a bunch of guys in the same office. That slows things down more as well.

So it's useful to keep that in mind as we wait for OSS software to catch up with commercial applications that have been around for ten years or more and are in release 5, 8, or 10 vs the OSS software that is still in release .91.

All of which is irrelevant for the most part to the corporate desktop - at least for those corporations not into heavy media development - which is most corporations. And most of them use Macs for that stuff, anyway. No matter how long it takes for Linux to catch up to Windows apps in the media field, it will take even longer to catch up to the Mac.

Re:new users from windows land?

[Master of Transhuman]

"Ndiswapper (which I've used before) comes in a nice package and is easy to install but no-where does it tell you that they didn't bother to include the firmware for the most common cards. And after that little problem I still couldn't get it connected. I finally ended up writing a script to force it to connect to my router with the mac address."

Yup. Had similar problems trying to get wireless to work with a VERY vanilla Linksys router and card on a Dell Inspiron 1200 for a client.

And for this particular card, the firmware WAS included - but the latest version was buggier than the earlier version. Took me a day of research to track that down on launchpad and the Ubuntu forums.

Then the stupid Wireless Assistant doesn't work worth a damn with WEP...

They need to automate this crap big time, just like the distros finally did with printer setup.

Re:Can Feisty be installed, though?

[Master of Transhuman]

Definitely a hardware - or wetware - problem.

Nobody goes through all that and can't get a working boot CD unless they've got hardware or brainware problems. Either your box is weird in some way, or your CD burner is messed up, or...

Wait a minute! You tried burning an ISO with "XP's builtin software"? XP does not HAVE builtin software to burn ISO images! You DO KNOW what an ISO image is, don't you?

Beyond that, once you presumably got a burned ISO CD, if it locks up the system, either your CD drive is crap when you burned the CD or any other CD drive you burned it on burned it badly or is incompatible with your CD drive, or your CD drive is crap and isn't reading it properly, or the CD media you're using is crap.

In short, find someone who knows what they're doing and get them to show you how.

This is definitely not a Linux or even an Ubuntu problem, it's a problem between the keyboard and the chair.

But getting back to Ubuntu...

[BrokenHalo]

How are you all measuring the boot-up time? Are we including the POST time, which can be very long, depending on hardware. My POST takes 20 seconds.

But my Slackware desktop is ready to use in 72 seconds from loading the kernel (on a now ageing 1.6GHz P4, with 2 graphics cards, 2 soundcards, a TV card and 2 disk drives with 7 partitions), so I'm curious as to what Ubuntu does to get the time down (if that is really the case).

Re:But getting back to Ubuntu...

[Bjerrk]

My Slackware boots into X in 29 seconds (counting from the moment i hit the enter key at the bootloader prompt, 'til i see the KDM screen). This took some tweaking, but it isn't that hard to accomplish. The hardware setup consists of a AMD3000+ Sempron Mobile CPU (yes, it's a laptop) and 1024 megabytes of RAM.

Re:Ubuntu is hard

[Master of Transhuman]

I've never used GNOME, as I started with KDE on Red Hat 7.3 and feel no need to switch desktops.

However, you shouldn't have had that much trouble finding where to mount a disk, no matter what desktop you're using. I've read that GNOME is weird in their handling of file management windows and the like, but the system settings, even if moved around in the menus, should have been locatable.

However, doing a quick Google, I see that there is NO instructions available on using the GUI mount facilities, apparently. All the instructions are how to edit /etc/fstab to mount NTFS partitions using either the native support or ntfs-ng.

So maybe there isn't an easy way to do this in Ubuntu.

In Kubuntu, you do System Settings, Advanced, Disk and File Settings, and then enter Administrator mode. Right click on any partition to change its options.

This is the second time I've read someone saying that they couldn't do something in Ubuntu which is relatively straightforward in Kubuntu. Why is there such a disconnect between usability in Kubuntu and Ubuntu?

Re:More Evidence

[Master of Transhuman]

What's wrong with this set of posts?

"Ubuntu's level of maturity is becoming genuinely amazing."

"Or just install Feisty (it's mostly stable)"

Ubuntu's level of maturity is "amazing" based on the amount of time it's been around.

However, compared to a REALLY mature distro like Mandriva, it's a joke,

That is the point of commenting on this article at all.

Eugenia says Ubuntu is "mature."

No, it is not.

And as such, it is not recommended for newbies to Linux, no matter how popular it may be with ACTUAL NON-NEWBIE LINUX users.

This is something you Ubuntu fanboys need to get through your head. YOU are NOT Linux newbies.

Re:the answer to your question is

[teh kurisu]

Dump Ubuntu. I'm coming to the conclusion that it is crap. Switch to Mandriva or Novell where you have a real control panel of one sort or another that lets you tweak stuff, instead of a dumbed down philosophy borrowed from Windows...

Done. I only actually downloaded and installed it to see what all the fuss was about, and I quickly went back to Gentoo. I've already downloaded the Novell SLED demo, to try out the new application pane and XGL without having to worry about manually installing it all.

GNU-Linux is not meaningful to an end-user

[Burz]

...nor does it help the ISV bridge that last chasm to the user's desktop.

Why? Because GNU/Linux is a platform that HAS no GUI, much less a desktop.

Yeesh.

Re:you're joking, right?

[FictionPimp]

Here's my reason. I am lazy. Neither windows nor linux can do what I want to do without a lot of effort. I've found many task I want to do in the realms of video and audio editing are just too freaking complicated or expensive to do on windows. And linux makes it even more so complicated. I used to love editing config files and copy and paste in scripts to get my os to work. I thought i was cool. Now I just want my crap to work. I still use linux because I can't afford a mac, but as soon as I get the cash, I'm getting a mac.

Parallel startup

[xororand]

The Init scripts of Gentoo Linux are able to start services in parallel which gave me almost 50% faster startup time on my system.

From /etc/conf.d/rc:
RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP="yes"

Ubuntu is leaving my PC

[EdibleEchidna]

Hardware and software support under Ubuntu seems to be getting worse, not better. My Epson CX5400 scanner used to work, now it doesn't. Gaim used to be able to log in to MSN, now it can't. These are both long-term bugs which haven't been addressed. I am buying an iMac next time round.

power control in BIOS

[Sharkeys-Day]

the manufacturers need to take power control OUT of the OS and put it back in the BIOS where it is independent of whatever bugs are introduced by the OS programmers.

If that's what you want, do like I do and put "apm=on acpi=off" on your kernel line in grub.conf.

APM is the "old" BIOS controlled power management. When it works, it just works. When it doesn't work, there is no way to fix it. For some reason, developers did not like that.

ACPI is the "new" OS controlled power management. When it doesn't work, you can blame the OS. Personally, I have never seen it "just work" without a grundle of low-level tweaking. It really annoys me when my laptop battery only lasts 8 hours in sleep mode, which is what I got from ACPI.

I can see why developers would prefer ACPI, but unless you happen to have the exact same hardware as one of the ACPI developers, you are getting alpha-test quality hardware support. And it has been that way for years now.

I have used APM on my last three laptops (all thinkpads), and had very few problems. 2 laptops ago, the soundcard would not survive a sleep cycle, but sound wasn't critical to me. The previous laptop worked perfectly with APM (T41). The T42 has different wireless hardware which doesn't survive a sleep cycle, but removing and reinserting the driver modules in the kernel succeeds in fixing that, so I just added that to the network scripts. Sleep didn't work at all under ACPI on this latest laptop.