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Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Benchmarked and Reviewed

tc6669 writes "Tom's Hardware just posted an interesting review of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It includes an expanded set of OS benchmarks that they also performed on the previous LTS release (8.04), to see just how much the mainstream Linux distro has progressed in two years."

25 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Better than the previous version: Ubuntu 10.03 Irrational Lynx

  2. Re:FINAL VERDICT: Not much has improved. by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Informative

    They totally changed the theme, lots of bugs closed, many apps have been changed, in short you have no idea what you are talking about.

  3. Upgrading in place from the previous LTS? by advocate_one · · Score: 4, Interesting

    is what matters to me... has anybody done reviewed that? all the reviews I've seen have been fresh installs...

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    1. Re:Upgrading in place from the previous LTS? by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That is a recipe for tragedy. The operating system itself upgrades perfectly well, but the GConf schemas are subtly incompatible and the GNOME people couldn't care less about solving this problem. If you're going from Hardy to Lucid I highly recommend a nuke-and-pave install and copy your homedir from a backup, without any of the dotfiles.

      I had a great deal of mysterious behavior on my laptop that was upgraded to every Ubuntu release since Hardy, and all of that stuff disappeared when I reinstalled and got rid of all my dotfiles.

    2. Re:Upgrading in place from the previous LTS? by advocate_one · · Score: 2, Funny

      oh dear... shades of the fun I had going from KDE 1.2 to KDE 2... I had to create a new user account and copy the config files across from there before KDE would load properly for me in my account... that was back going from Mandrake 7.2 to 8.0... oh happy days... praying the monitor detect wouldn't fry the monitor when setting up X.

      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    3. Re:Upgrading in place from the previous LTS? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes.

      Cupsd will utterly fail.

      you need to re-issue....

      sudo apt-get install --reinstall cups

      to get it working again.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:Upgrading in place from the previous LTS? by HBoar · · Score: 2, Informative

      Or just let the installer choose for itself. There is no reason why you have to manually choose where to install anything in *buntu now.

    5. Re:Upgrading in place from the previous LTS? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, you are perfectly correct. An operating system that doesn't hold the hands of the incompetent will never earn any market share. Kinda like manual transmissions - if it can't do all the work for the mindless zombie, it won't sell.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  4. A solid review by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I never read Tom's any more, but maybe I'll start. I appreciate that they tracked down the cause of a performance regression between Hardy and Lucid. The only other site that routinely benchmarks Linux distributions is Phoronix, and those guys are prone to just throwing weird results out there with no explanation. The number of inexplicable, unrepeatable benchmark results posted over at Phoronix is huge and ever-growing. This benchmark from Tom's is much more useful.

  5. It's working quite well under VirtualBox by Virtucon · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have four Guest Instances of 10.04 running alongside 9.10 under VirtualBox 3.2, no problems to report. You can see the difference especially in responsiveness vs. 9.10 in terms of app startup, system shutdown/startup and the GUI is definitely more polished. I did like the old "Human" motif better with 9.10 but for what I'm using it for, it's been solid.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  6. Re:Linux Mint derivative by rwa2 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ha, I didn't have to wait long... Linux Mint 9 (based on Ubuntu 10.04) came out of beta last week. And I've still been installing new machines with version 8 since then :-P

    Well, thanks for the reminder!

  7. Reset Gnome by Das+Auge · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I did an upgrade and had almost no problems. I did have to re-config grub2 to dual-boot into Windows-7.

    After a couple of weeks, I did something that made my bottom panel disappear. I couldn't get it back, so I deleted my .gnome and .gnome2 folders. Holy cow, did that make a difference. The windows became so much more responsive and features that I didn't have, appeared (I can't remember what they are off the top of my head). So if you are having any problems with GNOME, delete those folders and enjoy. Keep in mind that you'll need to reset all GNOME-related settings such as the desktop picture, panels, and such.

  8. I do something similar... by ebbomega · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But it's a little bit in-between.

    I do a fresh install, but maintain my /home partition as-is. I make my regular username my default root-accessible (via gksu/sudo) one, but then once I've installed, I create a new user named after the release (hardy, jaunty, lucid, etc.). Then, I log into my default account. Using the icons on my desktop, I then install my non-standard apps (audacity, gimp, vlc, easytag, nicotine, etc.).

    Once I've basically got my computer up to where I was before, then I log into my version-specific account which creates a fresh profile, and I start to check out the differences - themes, feature updates, new defaults - for all my apps I regularly use. If I see anything I like, I hop over to my default profile and adjust. If I see anything I don't, then I just don't bother changing my current settings.

    Has worked fantastic for my last 3 upgrades (please note that I never go with mid-release upgrades.... while the .04 series almost always include a ton of improvements, I find more often than not the .10 upgrades will break at least one thing).

    --
    Karma: Non-Heinous
  9. Intel Video Finally Working Well by SlashdotOgre · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For the last several releases, Ubuntu has dealt very poorly with Intel video cards. Now to be fair, this isn't entirely their fault; they were impacted by the switch to DRI2, GEM, Modesetting, etc. However they haven't handled it gracefully. I have three systems -- HTPC (Dell Studio Hybrid), laptop (Lenovo SL400), and a netbook (Acer Aspire One) -- that use the i915 driver, and both 9.04 and 9.10 were horrible (no 3D acceleration, poor 2D performance, etc.). In fact 9.10 (and possibly 9.04) required me to pass a kernel parameter to disable modesetting (i915.modeset=0) to even get to a GUI to install.

    I realize there were workarounds and hacks, to get reasonable performance from the Intel cards with the previous two releases, but nothing I found seemed simple or fully addressed the issue. This was largely due to some of the fixes requiring newer kernels and since Ubuntu isn't a rolling release distro, that would make fixing things much more difficult. My personal laptop (T400, also with a i915 video card) runs Gentoo, and I had fixed all the Intel video issues several months earlier.

    Fortunately 10.04 seems to have gotten everything back to working well again, and hopefully all the changes will be worth it in the future.

    --
    Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
  10. Insanely impressed with this release. by ebbomega · · Score: 5, Informative

    #1 feature that has me blown away: full iPod Touch/iPhone support in Rhythmbox, without jailbreaking. Seriously, this was the one thing that kept me from buying an iPod touch for so long... I eventually decided to just bite the bullet and find _SOME_ fix that works... ultimately going with just using iTunes within Virtualbox. But then I hooked up my iTouch after upgrading to Lucid and was about to go launch Virtualbox and test that was still working fine... but saw my iTouch, with its designated name, listed in Rhythmbox....

    I'm sitting there going, "No.... they didn't...." so I try to drag one of the songs in my library over to my iPod.... and boosh! They did!

    Only problem I found though was that when I moved a couple tracks over that had "Unknown" as album title, it actually made everything else with "Unknown" as the album title inaccessible on the iPod. seems though this only has to do with stuff that was added via iTunes... so if I remove the song and then re-add it in rhythmbox, it's perfectly fine.

    It's a bit of a weird bug, but easily worked past, and now means that I no longer need to keep going into Windows/iTunes to load stuff onto my iPod. Great jerb!

    Also, while I'm not a _huge_ fan of the new default theme (window control buttons on the right pls) I did end up picking one of the new themes that suited my tastes, and I honestly am not looking back at all. I keep saying this every time I upgrade, but best linux yet.

    --
    Karma: Non-Heinous
    1. Re:Insanely impressed with this release. by SwedishPenguin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't see why Gnome must necessarily hide this sort of stuff in an obscure gconf setting. It's almost like Microsoft and the obscure registry settings.
      In KDE, you right-click the title bar->configure window behavior->windows->buttons, and you can drag all the standard buttons and a few extra (sticky button, on top button, keeb below button, etc.) around the bar.

  11. Hey by mewshi_nya · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've noticed it to be running a little faster than 9.10 did, on my Lenovo IdeaPad S10... so... looks good :) And this is with all the bells and whistles turned on.

  12. Also by Das+Auge · · Score: 2, Informative

    Then also try deleting your .gconf .gconfd .metacity folders.

  13. Re:FINAL VERDICT: Not much has improved. by moonbender · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Violation of freedom of speech: deleting posts, which didn't happen. Exercising your freedom of ignoring other people's speech: browsing at +2.

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    Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
  14. Re:FINAL VERDICT: Not much has improved. by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Other big bugs exist.

    GUI browsing of SMB networks is still borked out of the box. Cups fails when doing an upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04 you haveto force a --reinstall of cups to fix it.

    Several other things as well.

    It's better, but still has some serious show stoppers for non linux guru people. My wife likes it as her only OS but only because I fixed SMB browsing and the Cups problem.

    Dont get me wrong, I think it's far more stable than Windows 7, but it's not perfect and there are big enough "oopsies" that they need to fix them and release 10.04.1 right away.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  15. Last Advice by Das+Auge · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Glad to help!

    My last bit of advice is to watch the video on YouTube from gotbletu. He has tons of Ubuntu how-to videos. He's slightly profane, but very informative.

  16. I use the Kubuntu 10.04 version instead by Rick17JJ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I use Kubuntu 10.04 which is the KDE version of Ubuntu 10.04. I installed it last week and it seems to be working perfectly. I chose the alternate install version of the AMD 64 version of Kubuntu 10.04. As most of you probably already know, Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop environment, whereas Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop environment. With Linux you get several choices in desktop environments.

    Being somewhat nervous about upgrading, I kept my old version of Kubuntu 9.10 and installed a fresh clean copy of Kubuntu 10.04 onto a different partition. That way I knew that I could always go back to my older version, if I needed to.

    I am one of the few people who insists on using different wallpaper for each of my virtual desktops. After installing Kubuntu 10.04, I had trouble figuring out how to get it to allow me to use different wallpaper for each of my virtual desktops. The way to enable doing that had changed since Kubuntu 9.10. I eventually found how to do that by clicking "Settings," then "System Settings," then "Desktop," then "Multiple Desktops," then checking the box for "different activity for each desktop." After doing that, I went to each virtual desktop and right clicked on a blank portion of the screen and then selected the "Desktop Activity Settings." I chose my favorite wallpaper from there.

    I don't care very much what default software they include with Kubuntu, since I know what programs I prefer and can quickly and easily download and install them for free from the official Ubuntu repositories. There are hundreds of free Linux programs available from the official repositories. I prefer to use Synaptic to download those programs, because it is an easy to use point and click front end for apt-get. I have not yet tried using KPackageKit instead, which comes already installed with Kubuntu. When I first installed Kubuntu 10.04, I used apt-get to download the Synaptic package manager, and then used Synaptic to install every other favorite free program of mine.

    I have been happily using Linux on the desktop for about 10 years now, but, I am not a computer expert. Kubuntu 10.04 seems to perform quite well on my several year old AMD 64 X2 4200+ computer. Unlike the earlier Kubuntu 9.10, I have not yet found any bugs or other problems with Kubuntu 10.04.

  17. ...or you could just use 'gnome-cleanup'. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's a tool for this; it's called 'gnome-cleanup':

    DESCRIPTION

              gnome-cleanup erases all GNOME user preferences, returning
              the user to the default look and feel. This can be used to
              undo undesired preference settings, or to correct the desk-
              top if the preferences become corrupt. The GNOME preference
              files are automatically recreated the next time the user
              logs into a GNOME session. By default this program erases
              the configuration files for the user running the command.

    In this case, it may not do exactly what you need, but in my experience it does the trick 99% of the time.

  18. Re:FINAL VERDICT: Not much has improved. by darkpixel2k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Violation of freedom of speech: deleting posts, which didn't happen. Exercising your freedom of ignoring other people's speech: browsing at +2.

    Deleting posts != free speech violation.

    You have the right to free speech. You don't have a right to post on Slashdot--a network owned by someone else, and more than you'd have the right to spray paint a message on your neighbors house. It wouldn't be a violation if he repainted his house. If you want free speech on the web, go buy your own domain name, load your own discussion or blog software onto your own server.

    That's what I do. Of course my free speech will last up until approximately 5 requests a second, then my old POS server will catch on fire.

    --
    There's no place like ::1 (I've completed my transition to IPv6)
  19. Maybe the most irritating thing by mrwolf007 · · Score: 2, Informative

    is having the buttons on the left.
    To fix that:
    open console or press ALT-F2
    type "gconf-editor"
    go to "apps->metacity->general"
    edit the key "button_layout" to "menu:minimize,maximize,close"
    No longer get nerved by the changed layout.