Ubuntu NVIDIA Graphics Driver: Windows Competitive, But Only With KDE

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Ubuntu NVIDIA Graphics Driver: Windows Competitive, But Only With KDE

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 13, 2012 @05:07AM from the layers-to-work-through dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The NVIDIA Linux driver across multiple GeForce graphics cards can compete with Microsoft Windows 7 on Ubuntu, but only when using the KDE desktop and not the default Unity/Compiz. It turns out based upon recent desktop environment benchmarking, Ubuntu's Unity desktop is now noticeably slower than GNOME/KDE/Xfce/LXDE with multiple GPUs/drivers. Sam Spilsbury of Canonical/Compiz acknowledges the problem but it may take longer than one Ubuntu cycle to correct."

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Remember that thread from the other day... by sootman · 2012-09-13 05:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

... about problems with Linux on the desktop? Yeah. Here you go.
(I'm not saying it's Linux's fault, but it is undeniably a problem with Linux. If some guy drives into you while you're stopped at a red light, the result is still that you have a broken car.)

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1. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 05:16 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I've said for a while now that desktop Linux's biggest problem is that the de facto primary consumer distro doesn't use KDE by default.
2. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by BMOC · 2012-09-13 05:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The average desktop user is disappointed when they only get 347 FPS instead of 422 FPS on their 1080P 3D-accelerated desktop? This is news to me.
  
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3. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Hatta · 2012-09-13 05:24 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  This is a problem with Ubuntu on the desktop, not Linux. Install Debian and whatever window manager you want and you have a perfectly useable Linux desktop.
  
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4. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by lister+king+of+smeg · 2012-09-13 05:47 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  ubuntu is fine one you rip out unity. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu with mate desktop, all work great just because unity and gnome are a flaming pile doesn't make the rest bad. apt-get purge unity && apt-get install anything-else(except gnome3) problem solved.
  
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5. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by horza · 2012-09-13 06:45 · Score: 2
  
  Or you can use Unity for day to day use, then switch to Kubuntu/Xubuntu when you want optimum GPU performance across multiple nvidia cards. KDE could be the alternative to Win32 for gaming.
  Phillip.
  
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  Property for sale in Nice, France
6. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by hairyfeet · 2012-09-13 06:48 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  No one is gonna call the article a troll or shill for pointing out a serious problem? I'm shocked! In the end the problem with Linux is NOT the UIs, or any of the pretty on top, in fact in many ways they have surpassed Windows and OSX in those areas.
  Nope, the same damned problem that plagued Linux 10 years ago STILL plagues it to this very day, and it all comes down to drivers and kernel devs constantly futzing with low level internals with nary a thought to QA, QC, or backwards compatibility. Whether anyone likes it or not SOME backwards compatibility IS required, because most software companies and ODMs aren't gonna pay a team of devs to constantly rebuild their products because some kernel dev got an itch.
  For proof I direct you to this page of over 100 show stopping bugs which just FYI but every. single. bug. has links showing that yes this IS a problem and its not just one person's opinion or experience and damned near every. single. problem. on that list can be traced by to devs fucking with internals and breaking shit. Now compare that page to the same page from 3 years ago and see how much has NOT been fixed in over 3 years.
  All the DE wars, Gnome 2 VS Gnome Shell and KDE 3 VS KDE 4? That's all turd polishing because if the guts are constantly breaking nobody will care about the pretty and as long as the devs are given carte blanche to fiddle with anything without a thought about what its doing to the stability of the overall ecosystem things just won't get better.
  That is why I had such high hopes for Ubuntu, I had hope that Shuttleworth would do like Google did with Android and just fork the thing away from the devs so that real stability and central management could be brought to bare instead of the cat herding we have now, but it was not to be.
  Linux has beautiful UIs, and tons of software, but retailers like myself won't ever touch your product if we install it on a system and 6 months later its broken its own drivers because some dev got a bee in his butt to futz with some low level system files and trashed my customer's WiFi or sound...ohh God sound, WTF were they thinking with Pulse?
  
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7. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by CodeheadUK · 2012-09-13 07:07 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  > I remember when I studied physics (years and years ago), that the human eye can only perceive about 60 cycles per second.
  Wouldn't that be biology?
  The point stands though. 60fps is as fast as you need to go for smooth animation. However, if a scene can only be rendered at 60 fps, adding more complexity, bad guysm, explosions, etc could push the render time over the VSYNC delay period. That's a bad thing, as you drop not to 59fps, but to 30fps, which is very noticeable.
  Crazy FPS speeds aren't always an e-penis waving contest, it simply means you have plenty of GPU horsepower left in reserve for more complexity or more bad guys on screen without dropping below that VSYNC interval.
8. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Sir_Sri · 2012-09-13 07:10 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  In the L4D2 natively on linux comments pointed out the basic problem with this assertion.
  Functions have some overhead and efficiency. A function that has a minimum execution of 4ms will effectively cap your FPS at 250, some other API might have a minimum execution of 2ms, which caps at 500. But at the 60FPS range they can both be the same, or the performance could reverse, the 4ms function could scale much better than the 2ms function for example. Also, because no one really thinks too seriously about FPS in the range of 150+ a lot of weird shit can happen that won't effect normal use.
  That said, you're right, who wants to have to buy a 50 or 100 dollar more expensive video card for the same performance? New games especially try and push the limits of the hardware, and you're just not going to get 300 FPS on Guild Wars 2, Borderlands 2 or Call of Duty 2 or with lots of details turned on using affordable hardware today. L4D2 is basically based on a 4 year old engine that aims to be fast on mid range machines. But getting 15 fps or even a steady 40 or 50 FPS with 15 in the marginal cases of major effects on screen can really hurt the experience. Obviously the next generation of consoles is going to raise the bar a step further.
9. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by mcgrew · 2012-09-13 07:20 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Not even Ubuntu, but its desktops. TFS says KDE is faster than Windows, which seems right to me -- I'm running W7 on a year old notebook and kubuntu on an ancient tower, and the tower (with a much slower processor and less memory) is faster than the notebook. The tower is running kubuntu.
  
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10. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Anne+Thwacks · 2012-09-13 07:20 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You may be able to use Unity. I have yet to find anyone else that can. I have installed it for about 12 users now, and none of them was able to use it for more than 10 minutes*.
  All are perfectly happy with Gnome-shell (I am not, but that is different story).
  *The essential problem is that hierarchical text menu structures work. Unrecognisable icons are completely unintelligeable and non-intuitive. Things like the Ubuntu Software Centre take huge amounts of screen space - making it very difficult to find anything - worse (horrifically worse) this particular evil beast has masses of animated crap at the top, needlessly eating your bandwidth and processing power.
  
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11. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Grishnakh · 2012-09-13 07:35 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  This is exactly right. So many people are bitching about Unity and Gnome3, all this would be moot if they'd just dump that crap and make KDE the default desktop, and different distros customize the many configuration options in it to their liking. KDE can be made to look and act very different with the config options and themes (and of course users can use that as a starting point and make further tweaks easily in "System Settings"). People who want something lighterweight can use XFCE or whatever, so that can be offered as an alternative to KDE in some distros.
  Why all the distros are so in love with Gnome, I have no idea.
12. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Galestar · 2012-09-13 07:35 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Say what you want about it, call me a shill, whatever. I actually like Unity.
  
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13. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Punto · 2012-09-13 07:44 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yeah but this is still relevant to that other thread. Somebody at canonical decided it was a good idea to take over the GPU and RAM with their useless "unity" interface because that's their "vision for the future" and they have to force it on everyone. This is the problem that Linus and the rest of the kernel people are pointing out.
  
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14. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Type44Q · 2012-09-13 07:49 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  ubuntu is fine one you rip out unity. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu with mate desktop, all work great just because unity and gnome are a flaming pile doesn't make the rest bad. apt-get purge unity && apt-get install anything-else(except gnome3) problem solved.
  user@gateway ~ $ apt-get install anything-else
  E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
  E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
  user@gateway ~ $
  ???! :(
15. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by synthespian · 2012-09-13 07:56 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  This is exactly right. So many people are bitching about Unity and Gnome3, all this would be moot if they'd just dump that crap and make KDE the default desktop
  Right on! The sad truth is, many problems in the Linux arena are created by the community itself.
  One would hope Ubuntu to be the distro that unites the community (Shuttleworth - it must be said - has a vision) but they turned around and made a dumb choice, with a subpar GUI choice that went wrong in two different ways: 1) failed attempt to emulated Humanized's Enso modal interface; 2) failed attempt at "simple is better" with a horrible looking piece-of-shit no modern Windows 7 or Mac user would see the point in even going near the thing (hey, what's up with those horrible OpenOffice icons?). That stupid Unity interface is what you get when you take CSS web developers and let them design a desktop GUI...
  KDE is competitive. KDE has usability studies.
  This insistence on Gnome is insane.
  KDE is written in C++ this is a competitive advantage (compared to Gnome). That Gnome-based stuff is out-of-date is demonstrated by the article.
  Linux developers: are you gonna loose the C++11 bandwagon, too? If you do, you are dumb beyond belief...
  
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16. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by horza · 2012-09-13 08:07 · Score: 2
  
  I'm not sure what users you have that cannot use Unity, it's not really harder to use than an Android phone. It is also simple for those abandoning OS X, apparently it's quite similar, whereas KDE is more for Microsoft Windows refugees. There is a difference between not liking the look of Unity or not being able to customise it as much as desired (aesthetics), not being able to use it in in a way that is familiar (productivity), and not being able to use it because it is difficult to work out how to do things (learning curve). I'm not sure the new beta Software Centre is a particularly convincing argument against Unity as how often do you actually ever use it?
  Unity is so simple to use I can see it replacing a lot of people's home desktops. KDE is so familiar I can see it replacing office desktops, saving companies a fortune.
  Phillip.
  
  --
  Property for sale in Nice, France
17. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by SoftwareArtist · 2012-09-13 08:20 · Score: 2
  
  I really like Unity, especially in 12.04. It's a very clean, well organized UI.
  Just another data point for you, since you seem to be collecting them.
  
  --
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18. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Grishnakh · 2012-09-13 08:21 · Score: 2
  
  It seems to me the problem isn't necessarily the community as much as it is the distro maintainers. Of course, the community make the distros popular or not through their choices.
19. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by couchslug · 2012-09-13 08:37 · Score: 2
  
  "ubuntu is fine one you rip out unity."
  We would be having fewer discussions of Unity Suckage if we spread the word how easy it is to be rid of it.
  http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/03/gnome-classic-in-ubuntu-12-04-its-like-nothing-ever-changed
  
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20. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by shellbeach · 2012-09-13 08:55 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Sorry, but another vote for Unity here, FWIW, and I used to be a huge Unity nay-sayer (I even switched to linux mint for half a year out of protest) until I actually tried it and was pleasantly surprised. I find it's an excellent power-user interface with an emphasis on the minimal, and that suits me just fine -- any interface that provides more vertical screen realestate gets my vote. The dash panel works great for me, too -- I find typing much faster than hierarchical GUI menus, and Unity makes it possible to do everything via the keyboard if you want.
  I should add that I've only used the incarnation of Unity present in 12.04 -- it's quite possible it wasn't always as polished as it is now. But personally, now, I would hate to switch back to any other interface. I've used a hell of a lot of WMs and DEs over the years, and Unity's very much my favourite so far.
21. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-09-13 09:34 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Unfortunately, stock KDE has all that "semantic desktop" bullshit. What's needed is for someone to take it and make it the default, but tuned it right. Kinda like what Mint does with Gnome3 (though the necessary changes would be much smaller here).
22. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-09-13 09:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Once you rip out the stock DE, what's the advantage of Ubuntu over Debian and a dozen other distros? It's no longer just right out of the box, and the amount of knowledge you need to replace the DE is about equivalent to what you need to install Debian with your DE of choice...
23. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Sheik+Yerbouti · 2012-09-13 09:40 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Actually it's quite noticeable in real world use. I just tried out Ubuntu 12.0.4 on a 12 inch netbook Asus 1201N with Nvidia ION graphics. It was all but unusable with Unity and had been running Windows 7 fine. I put Xubunutu on and it is much better. They quite simply and thoroughly screwed the pooch with Unity. It's pretty bad and this insistence that the Unity bar not be moved is insane when you can move the taskbar in Windows and the dock in OS X . It's a design choice that is antithetical to the community that Canonical is a part of. I mean Mark Shuttleworth appears to have a Job's complex and the whole idea of open source is freedom not restriction. It's just sad really.
24. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 09:41 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Now that is funny, a Debian fanboy telling someone -else- to keep up. I'm sure the packages in stable are probably older than you are.
25. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Analog+Penguin · 2012-09-13 10:21 · Score: 2
  
  Well, were you root?
26. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 11:48 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Android manufacturers DO have to pay for the OS. They pay to Microsoft for several patents. Android, and by extension, Linux, are successful in the mobile space because there is a proven, simple, and reliable way to enter the market-place for the average developer and to get paid for their work. It's hard enough to develop software, but developing successful new business models is no trivial task.
  Desktop Linux is unsuccessful because most developers are not attracted to the platform.
  How do Apple and Microsoft attract developers? By providing (mostly) stable, reliable, and easy to use platforms for developers to create their own BUSINESSES, not just software. These enticements are not just limited to software like the Win32 API, .NET, Objective-C, C#, driver testing and signing, OEM integration, and other software frameworks and solutions. It also includes operational infrastructure like databases, management software, published de-facto 'standards' (but standards none the less), 'the cloud', etc.
  In other words, they recognise that their primary customer is the developer and they take great pains to help developers make money from the platform that they try to sell to their secondary customer, the user. They create a market where developers can make money, and they in turn make money, too.
  Do you see anyone at all in the desktop Linux space trying to approach things from this perspective? I don't. Canonical? Nope. Debian? Nope. Suse? Nope. ArchLinux? Nope. RedHat? Nope. Not a single one of the major desktop Linux vendors has managed to do this. They are all concerned with providing a computing platform for the user and have all bowed down at the altar of Open Source in prayer, hoping that this magical property of their software will somehow spontaneously suffice for their own business to be successful. Don't get me wrong, I love Open Source, GNU, GPL, MIT licenses, whatever. Great stuff. But those don't in and of themselves attract the developers that will create an active and vibrant eco-system for the desktop.
  What do you think Microsoft mean when they harp their "ecosystem" idea? Why do you think they're sitting on a chest of patents they claim are violated in the Linux kernel, but have not sued anyone... except mobile vendors who have created a business ecosystem that is modeled after (and compete with) their own? Vendors who create platforms that attracts developers?
  Microsoft and Apple laugh at and ignore desktop Linux because there is no one in the market worth competing against. And there's no one in the market because no one is engaging developers in any meaningful way to work on desktop Linux.
27. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by PrimaryConsult · 2012-09-13 12:23 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Disclaimer: I love Debian and I believe it is the best OS money can't buy (with RHEL being the best distro money can buy but that is another topic)... for servers it is fantastic, for desktops it is excellent for building exactly what you want with absolutely no bloat. The support you can find online is consistently the best available.
  *However* I cannot agree that replacing a DE is equivalent to installing Debian with your DE of choice. I find a Debian install is 95% finished when the installer completes, but that 5% can feel completely insurmountable to a Linux newcomer. These issues have included:
  -Bootloader problems. Nightmare to figure out if you have never manually dealt with a bootloader. A 2 minute fix if you have. Never seem to have this issue with Ubuntu.
  -Network (wired and wireless) problems, primarily caused by the insistence of non-free not being installed as part of the installer... having to USB over network drivers is a huge turnoff and leads to people ignoring this. Then when the closest equivalent "free" driver is used, you end up with things like a wireless that doesn't scan, or a wired NIC that randomly drops to 600 kilobit speed or cuts out entirely... Ubuntu just makes it happen.
  -Graphics issues. If I really wanted to run with what only free or outdated drivers can provide, I would install it in a VM under my Windows 7 partition. Having to use scripts some random guy made to properly suppress the dated repo packages and get the latest and greatest NVidia drivers is not ideal. Ubuntu generally keeps graphics drivers up to date in the packages.
  -Codec issues... Ubuntu IIRC it was just some checkboxes for "Good, Bad & Ugly", in Debian I had to resort to adding a 3rd party repository debian-multimedia (now deb-multimedia) just to get multithreaded Mplayer...
  -Printer installation. This is a "too much choice" problem, you can go with HP's stuff or plain ol' cups, both will work but there's no clear choice presented. I don't remember what Ubuntu's was but it was one of those "ah my printer's already here" moments.
  -Purposely making things confusing. One word: iceweasel.
  I do love Debian but installing should be left for power users... after that 5% extra polishing anyone can use it, but that really is the difference between Debian and Ubuntu.
28. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by symbolset · 2012-09-13 14:05 · Score: 2
  
  I see a lot of people enumerating absolute problems with Linux which should be cured and I would agree that there are many Linux distributions which are less advantageous than others and could be improved in some way. I've never found one that is just perfect to suit me and I don't expect to ever unless I take the time out to make my own distro. Frankly I'm not quite happy with anything I find in IT and I could improve each one if I had 20 man-years to do it. Many distros now available are quite fine with a bit of tweaking for most things, though for a robust server I would still go with BSD.
  For the desktop I've managed to find a Linux distro more acceptable to me than the mainstream alternatives for over fifteen years. Initially this was about Freedom, later about hardware compatibility, and more lately about security and reliability.
  To me the desktop metaphor is dying now. I do far more and spend far more time on my Android phone and tablet than I do on a traditional desktop PC or laptop.
  Now to get topical. Since this is a Cathedral and Bazaar story again, and assuming you've all done your homework, I can put a premise that answers the question. The reason why Linux desktops aren't taking off is that they're not a Cathedral, and they're not a Bazaar. Linux desktops are a redundant array of beowulf clusters of heterogeneous computing paradigms, each uniquely adapted to its environment. You can't sell that. Just as Windows Phone and Windows 8 are staking out the dusty, little travelled middle ground between the Cathedral and the Bazaar, Desktop Linux platforms are attempting to become the Oort cloud beyond the periphery of their scope. It's cold and lonely out there, but quite roomy.
  
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29. Re:Remember that thread from the other day... by hairyfeet · 2012-09-13 15:03 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Sorry AC but gaming is a red herring. As much as we PC gamers like to think different its a VERY small niche. Oh its a niche that spends a LOT of money, billions in fact, but the same can be said of yacht racing or Ferrari manufacture and nobody would claim either of those is mainstream.
  No the problem is that for every gamer (who just FYI doesn't have any problems with Windows so isn't a good market to target anyway) there are easily 10,000 like my GF who uses ONLY the Internet. When she gets on the PC I built her she doesn't use a single thing other than the browser and media player, that's it. Everything else is email and FB and Yahoo and 40 other websites she goes to often...so why doesn't Linux work for her?
  Simple because as that list I provided soundly demonstrates even if something works in distro foo when foo+1 comes out there is a VERY good chance one of the low level internals will be futzed with by some dev who had an itch and it'll be broken. Before anybody screams "But it works on servers!" I would point out that 1.-Servers rarely even have DEs, they don't care about sound or WiFi, they aren't using browsers, there is simply less surface area for the devs to attack and 2.-They are all controlled by highly trained well educated server admins who get paid the big bucks to deal with breakage, nobody is gonna hand out free server admins with each desktop sold.
  Until someone can fork the ENTIRE SYSTEM away from the devs, who have made it clear from Torvalds down that they WILL NOT STOP FUTZING no matter how much headaches it causes then it simply won't get better.
  I have said many times I am ready to issue a pepsi challenge to those that believe in Linux, none will take me up on it. We'll take ANY regular distro, not LTS because we have seen that stands for "don't backport shit", that was released the same quarter as Vista, the most hated and supposedly "buggy" MSFT OS. Pick Ubuntu, PCLOS, frankly I don't care which one you pick I'll still win the challenge. We will then install it beside Vista on identical boxes, hell we'll make it a dual boot if you are worried about ANY deviation in the chips, we'll make sure both systems have 100% working drivers (which I'll allow you to CLI all you want on this part, since you are the builder not the user at this point) and then we'll simulate what will happen to the user by upgrading both to current.
  I know I will win this challenge because I've done it before and have seen what happens. The Vista system? Runs perfectly, ALL the drivers and software that was running on LTS WILL be running after the last patch, the Linux system? BROKEN, HORRIBLY BROKEN. Sound will be wasted, the WiFi will be gone, hell you'll be lucky if the GPU drivers are working at all, and I don't care which chip you pick because the devs fuck Intel as bad as they do AMD and Nvidia so it'll still be fucked, it'll all fall down like a house of cards.
  So if you want to know what it'll take to have a "year of the Linux desktop" it is this: When I can take ANY release from 3 versions ago and upgrade to current and have a 100% functional system? Then and ONLY then will it be ready. But I've tried over a dozen distros so far and not one, not the rolling releases like arch nor the traditional releases like PCLOS and Ubuntu have passed the mustard, not one.
  
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Two statements: by aussersterne · 2012-09-13 05:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

Linux advocate:
"It may be slower, but you're not stuck with anything Windows-like and you can fix the code yourself!"
Prospective user:
"Wait... It's slower, AND it doesn't work like Windows, AND you want me to fix the code myself?!"

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1. Re:Two statements: by Nikker · 2012-09-13 05:46 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  If you're charging +$90/hr then, well ya I would suggest that.
  
  Hell I set up Ubuntu 12.04 + Cairo-Dock + VMWare Workstation 9.0 on a computer illiterate friends computer with a Win7 Guest in about an hour on a quad core with a decent HDD. Then I showed her the dock and some wobbly windows and she basically taught her self she was so into it.
  
  Funny thing is I don't even make close to your pay grade. You should start to wonder if you are really worth it.
  
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2. Re:Two statements: by Ginger+Unicorn · 2012-09-13 05:47 · Score: 2
  
  No, he's saying that not paying $120 is an advantage.
  
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3. Re:Two statements: by PopeRatzo · 2012-09-13 06:11 · Score: 2
  
  So you're saying people should expect less from Linux because it's free?
  If by "less" you mean, "you will owe less on your credit card because you didn't drop a C-note on Windows", or, "I am less likely to be locked out of my system because I changed my hard drive and now Microsoft Activation doesn't recognize my serial number" or "My operating system takes up a lot less disk space and requires less in the way of computing resources now that I'm using Linux instead of Windows" then, yes, they should expect "less".
  
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4. Re:Two statements: by Noughmad · 2012-09-13 06:30 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I'm pretty sure that you can't fix Windows in a hour either.
  
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5. Re:Two statements: by cheesybagel · 2012-09-13 07:02 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Pay an Indian to fix it in several hours then.
6. Re:Two statements: by Gothmolly · 2012-09-13 07:21 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  So you install Linux, then put VM+Win7 on it so she can get work done?
  Sounds like YOU are the one not adding value.
  
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7. Re:Two statements: by Anne+Thwacks · 2012-09-13 07:36 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  There is no way Windows is operational within an hour of installing - a couple of days of installing, updating and rebooting are required unless you have a custom image to use. Even if its pre-installed (eg new laptop) it will take many hours to create the recovery disks, - which you need to do before anything else. And it will take a ton of money to replace the pre-installed boatware with the real versions of Office and what ever anti-virus scam you have been lumbered with.
  Ubuntu is productive within 40 minutes of deciding to install, if you have a CD to hand, even on a six year old laptop (provided you avoid Unity).
  As for drivers - a new Windows machine probably comes with drivers (which you can preserve by creating the recovery disks), but with older machines, in all probability, the network drivers won't be there, and without them, you can't access the Internet to download them!
  There is just no way Windows is ready for the average user - unless he is completely unconcerned about stability and security. Oh, wait ...
  
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8. Re:Two statements: by Nikker · 2012-09-13 07:42 · Score: 2
  
  It might have been slightly more than *one* hour including instruction but for a high-end pro parent should be able to squeeze it in.
  
  You should really try installing / running Windows Guest on a Linux host the drive speed is really uncanny for the guest. On a Phenom II x4 @ 3.2GHz and a Seagate Barracuda 500GB, 7200 RPM I can very realistically install a Windows 7 guest in 20-30 min from "insert DVD" to desktop. VMWare 9.0 actually has light years better GPU drivers support which is why I used it for Netflix. Since VMWare does not use apt to install you can actually install Player/Workstation after you do the initial install while apt is grabbing updates without issue.
  
  --
  A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
9. Re:Two statements: by mcgrew · 2012-09-13 08:15 · Score: 2
  
  So you're saying people should expect less from Linux because it's free?
  It would be logical to expect less from a free program than an expensive one, but in fact you get far more with a good Linux distro than any version of Windows. I'm running both kubuntu and Win7 at home, and Win7 lacks features and us far less useable. OTOH I haven't found any features in Windows that kde lacks, other than Windows being prettier.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
10. Re:Two statements: by Patch86 · 2012-09-13 08:47 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You're pretty well paid. If you applied that logic to everything in your life, you'd struggle to get much done. "Making a coffee takes 10 minutes, which is $20 of my time. Coffee from a shop costs less than $20, so I better not make myself a coffee- it'd be a waste of my time!".
  No wonder really rich people need to pay servants to do things for them; their own self-worth must be crippling.
11. Re:Two statements: by couchslug · 2012-09-13 20:29 · Score: 2
  
  Here's the "fix", takes about two minutes.
  http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/03/gnome-classic-in-ubuntu-12-04-its-like-nothing-ever-changed
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
12. Re:Two statements: by Ginger+Unicorn · 2012-09-13 21:51 · Score: 2
  
  No, but the people who find that unity does what they want don't have to spend $120 on windows in order to have a GUI on their PC.
  Also, unless you have a slow internet connection or PC I'm pretty sure you can install gnome in less than an hour - and most people don't get paid $120 an hour. To the vast majority of people $120 is at least a day's work, and more than their entire week's food budget.
  
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  (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Ubuntu Unity by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 05:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

Im sorry, but can we finally admit that Unity is a mistake. I tried (REALLY TRIED) to like unity. Its not that bad after all, but it was a step BACKWARDS. Couple that with all of the GNOME devs going Batsh**t crazy and creating GNOME3 and we have a problem. KDE is where I live now, but I miss my GNOME2. For me this is just one more nail in the coffin of Unity. Dont get me wrong though, I can see myself going to Unity in a few years, but that is a LOOOONG time as far as Linux is concerned. There are just too many issues with it right now.
1. Re:Ubuntu Unity by MrEricSir · 2012-09-13 05:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Dont get me wrong though, I can see myself going to Unity in a few years, but that is a LOOOONG time as far as Linux is concerned. There are just too many issues with it right now.
  Don't worry, by the time Unity's stability begins to materialize, they'll have lost interest and moved on to something else. Such is the way of the Linux desktop.
  
  --
  There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
2. Re:Ubuntu Unity by MMC+Monster · 2012-09-13 05:42 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I agree about Unity. It sucks rocks, and I downgraded to an earlier version of Ubuntu for a while.
  HOWEVER, you may want to give Linux Mint 13 with the Cinnamon desktop. They basically take Gnome and add their own desktop to it. As a bonus, it's built off of Ubuntu and you can use all the Ubuntu repositories with it.
  So you get the bug fixes associated with the latest Gnome, the repositories of Ubuntu, the solidness of Linux, and the clean interface of Cinnamon.
  Been using it about a month and quite happy so far.
  
  --
  Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
3. Re:Ubuntu Unity by X0563511 · 2012-09-13 05:59 · Score: 2
  
  Sounds like MATE is what you want/need.
  Shame you didn't log in, as you're probably never going to come back and find this, are you?
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
4. Re:Ubuntu Unity by horza · 2012-09-13 06:53 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I appear to switch too early ahead of the curve. I couldn't stand Gnome2 so switched to KDE 4.0, even though I knew it was a buggy mess. By the time it got to 4.2 it was pleasant to use. I bought a new PC and decided I may as well install the relatively new Unity along side just for fun... and have been using it ever since. I do appreciate KDE but I just find Unity nicer to use. I find KDE a little too much like Windows, but other than than they are both very pleasant and productive. Both have file managers that suck though (Nautilus and Dolphin). Not sure why XFCE went with Thunar instead of taking ROX, come to think of it.
  Phillip.
  
  --
  Property for sale in Nice, France
5. Re:Ubuntu Unity by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-09-13 09:40 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Alternatively, if you find that Ubuntu repos are more bullshit than they're helpful, go for LMDE - vanilla Debian with Cinnamon on top out of the box.
how to correct it immediately by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 05:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

may take longer than one Ubuntu cycle to correct.
Actually you can correct it immediately, by using the KDE desktop. Plus, you get a richly featured desktop that isn't trying to cater to the Facebook crowd.
1. Re:how to correct it immediately by egr · 2012-09-13 07:46 · Score: 2
  
  KDE is probably the most flexible desktop out there for configuring it exactly how you want it to be.
  The defaults are almost right for me, except that Dolphin isn't as good as Konq as a filesystem explorer, but that's trivial to configure too.
  I agree. I am an ex Gnome user. However with each major release they removed more and more configuration options. I have tried several GTK-based window managers after my disappointment with Gnome 3, but they all felt like a downgrade. I decided to give KDE a try and I never looked back since then. Customization is endless. It is amazing how you can configure every window to look and behave in any way you want. The desktop is also very snappy, and krunner is a nice tool for starting and finding things in a few keystrokes.
  As for the file manager I still cannot find a suitable replacement for Midnight Commander. There is still seem not to be any comparable (feature rich, snappy) alternatives to the Windows' Total Commander.
Who likes Unity ? by 1s44c · 2012-09-13 05:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

I hate Unity.
Everyone on Slashdot seems to hate Unity.
The rest of the Internet seems to hate Unity too.
Is there anyone that actually likes Unity? Or are Canonical just trying to piss everyone off?
1. Re:Who likes Unity ? by Ingenium13 · 2012-09-13 05:37 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I refused to update for the longest time when Ubuntu switched to Unity, but then I got a new laptop and figured I'd give it a shot first. I was pretty set of just using Mint but really wanted to give Unity a try before switching. I was surprised that I actually sort of liked it, especially once I learned the keyboard shortcuts. My task bar always got cluttered with lots of windows in Gnome 2, and their order wasn't consistent which was a minor annoyance. Realistically, Unity feels a lot like Windows 7 to me (though I've only used Windows 7 briefly on other people's machines, I really liked the UI), and it got rid of all the clutter. I like that Gnome Do is essentially integrated into Unity, and there are some other nice features as well.
  That said, I haven't seriously tried Gnome 3 yet. I installed it and loaded it up, and then did a wtf when I couldn't really figure out how to use it and wondered why it was so ugly before switching back to Unity. It felt like a very incomplete product. I've since read that you need to use a lot of add ons (or whatever the correct term for them is) to make it more usable, but at this point it's not worth the investment in time when Unity works well enough for me.
2. Re:Who likes Unity ? by arkhan_jg · 2012-09-13 06:11 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Iss there anyone that actually likes Unity? Or are Canonical just trying to piss everyone off?
  Problem is, lots of people hate GNOME 3 too. And KDE has always been divisive, even though the original licence problems have long been resolved. But then, they broke KDE in the transition to KDE4, and from I've seen recently, it's still buggy as f**k and has been for years.
  So that leaves, in no particular order;
  1) GNOME 2. Abandoned. Resurrected as cinammon in the mint ubuntu fork, but still niche. And dear god, the launch bar is TEENY.
  2) GNOME 3 /Gnome-shell. Hated by many, the 'let's take away all the stuff people liked' edition, complete with all the options to change virtually anything removed.
  3) Unity. Jeez, GNOME 3 really does suck. Let's do something else altogether! Hmm, how about a sideways touch friendly mounted springy dock, and all the apps need to be modified so their window options get merged into the top bar, until they don't.
  4) KDE4. Still buggy as f**k and options up to the eyeballs. And I'm struggling to think of a mainstream distro that really backs it; maybe openSUSE, but they kinda went agnostic with the whole Novell thing, and switched to GNOME.
  5) XfCE. OK, fine. It's lightweight, it's simple. But some of us want a GUI shell that does more than just be a holder for a bunch of terminal windows. And doesn't look like it's still the year 2000.
  So you have the most popular distro Ubuntu with a homegrown shell that's weird and slow, GNOME seem to have forgotten they actually had a userbase before they went off the deep end, KDE are bobbling around trying to work out how to make it not crash, and the remaining desktops are spraying off into a bunch of niche areas.
  I'm currently trying to work out what distro & shell to use on my home quiet/dev rig as I'm sick of bugfixing the hackintosh OSX that's on there at the moment.
  And right now, they ALL suck.
  
  --
  Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
3. Re:Who likes Unity ? by c · 2012-09-13 06:21 · Score: 2
  
  > Is there anyone that actually likes Unity?
  I can't say I like it, but I don't hate it. I'm not even sure "like" is a word that applies to a desktop. If I'm noticing the desktop at all enough to like it, then there's something wrong... you're supposed to be using a computer for the applications, not the desktop.
  As a small screen/netbook UI, it's minimalist and generally pretty good. I've had it on my netbook since the UNR days and I can't really complain.
  As a general workstation desktop, 12.04 has fixed the worst annoyances (multi-head gliches, mostly) to the point that it doesn't really get in my way. 11.10 was not a good release and if that's where you first encountered it, I don't blame you for hating it.
  
  --
  Log in or piss off.
4. Re:Who likes Unity ? by Grishnakh · 2012-09-13 07:42 · Score: 2
  
  I don't know what you're talking about with KDE and bugginess. It works just fine for me on Linux Mint 12 KDE (LM13KDE is even better, but I haven't installed that yet on the laptop I'm typing this on at the moment). It's perfectly stable.
  Yes, the versions before around 4.6 had problems (the ones before 4.4 were seriously buggy), but that's old news. Get something with 4.8 or 4.9 or better and it's fine. The latest Linux Mint KDE version is excellent.
use kubuntu instead by galaad2 · 2012-09-13 05:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

well, i figured it would be some problem with the graphics drivers and that's why i switched to using the kubuntu 12.04 LTS dvd instead of the normal ubuntu/unity one, i've been having weird issues with unity lately (invisble mouse cursor and ignored keyboard input on a fujitsu siemens Amilo La1703 notebook - but KDE works perfectly)
http://www.kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/download
( for those that fell recently into the linux soup and don't know what this is, this is practically the same thing as ubuntu 12.04 LTS but with the KDE interface as default instead of unity. )

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root@127.0.0.1
How can the desktop be slow? by Animats · 2012-09-13 05:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

What are they doing wrong that results in a slow desktop? Re-rendering all text from HTML on every frame cycle of a drag? The graphics power available in modern GPUs has orders of magnitude more power than needed to manipulate a set of flat windows and icons.
Re:Indeed slow. by 1s44c · 2012-09-13 05:26 · Score: 2

Tried to install the latest ubuntu on a 733 MHz laptop, and it was slow as snails. Ended-up switching to LXDE (lubuntu) which runs fine.
Even on high end hardware I'd use LXDE, all the extra bloat in KDE and GNOME serves no purpose but to waste memory and CPU cycles and the extra graphical fluff is just pointlessly distracting.
Re:Who likes Unity ? I do as of 12.04 by LeDopore · 2012-09-13 05:27 · Score: 5, Informative

I am on Slashdot and I do not hate Unity as of 12.04.
I could not stand the Unity that came with 11.10 - I run a lot of MATLAB, and there was no functional way to switch between multiple figures. People would moan and complain about Unity taking a few more clicks or whatever; for me it was actually impossible for me to switch between windows as needed on 11.10, try as I might. I was fearing a forced switch to Unity, since Ubuntu wouldn't be an option for me anymore.
Unity on 12.04 is a completely different story. While I still don't love its window-switching behavior, the super-W feature of displaying all windows is wonderful.
Unity might not be as polished as KDE 3.5 yet, but 12.04 was so much better than 11.10 that I'm willing to see where Canonical's headed.

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Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Desktop linux, not linux by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 05:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

You keep saying "linux" when you really mean "desktop linux". Two points on that:
1. Linux is an entire world of computing, and desktop linux is actually a small part of that world. Linux is first a multi-user unix-like OS, and second everything else. Since when has a multi-user unix-like OS excelled at being a consumer-oriented desktop system? Never. They excell at being workstations and servers, and require a competant admin. That's just the reality of it, so why do you think it needs to be changed?
2. You (and others) keep implying that desktop linux is worthless ("period"), when people like me have been using it for 15 years and wouldn't even consider switching to a consumer OS. What you really mean is that it doesn't hold up as a consumer-oriented OS, and I'll be the first to admit that you're right. CONGRATULATIONS.
1. Re:Desktop linux, not linux by MrHanky · 2012-09-13 06:11 · Score: 2
  
  ... which is no more competitive with Windows 7's graphics performance than Linux is. In fact less so with nvidia.
2. Re:Desktop linux, not linux by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-09-13 07:59 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Summary: "The common complaint about Linux really isn't a valid complaint if you argue using pedanticism and moving goal posts!"
  I've never actually seen a Linux Apologist before.
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
may take longer than one Ubuntu cycle to correct? by tippe · 2012-09-13 06:39 · Score: 2

whatchu talkin bout Spilsbury?

sudo apt-get install kde-standard
A few minutes later, problem solved. Longer than one Ubuntu cycle... what a joke...
In that case... by s13g3 · 2012-09-13 07:17 · Score: 2

If you're a *nix user of any skill or experience and running Ubuntu who is genuinely concerned about performance and stability, you should probably be running Debian anyway and pointing to the Ubuntu repos for anything that might be missing or too old for your liking.

--
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
Re:Indeed slow. by Anne+Thwacks · 2012-09-13 07:45 · Score: 2

And some of the older hardware was built to very high standards. The new stuff falls to bits before you get it home.
(Lenovo T43 user)

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Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Re:Indeed slow. by jedidiah · 2012-09-13 07:58 · Score: 2

One of my dirt cheap ION net tops will run circles around the kind of machine you are trying to cling to. Some times it's just time to let go.
You are WAY PAST the dirt cheap option at this point.
My machine 10 years ago wasn't even that slow and I'm a cheap bastard.

--
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
who cares? by kenorland · 2012-09-13 09:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

All these desktops (including Unity) are more than fast enough on even low end laptops. The real problem with Unity, KDE, and Windows for that matter, is usability.
The irony behind all of this hoopla is, of course, that Windows and Mac users were always claiming that their desktops were faster because they didn't use X11 and "network transparency"; that was utter nonsense, of course. Nobody cared or even noticed that Windows and Mac graphics were actually worse. Now that temporarily, a couple of Linux desktops benchmark slower on a prerelease version of one Linux distribution, the sky is suddenly falling.
To all desktop developers: fix your usability problems, forget about FPS pissing contests.
Just Move On by FyberOptic · 2012-09-13 14:07 · Score: 3, Interesting

The irony is that many years ago KDE seemed to be what the majority of people ran. Gnome just didn't seem to have the features, or whatever the case. Then somehow Gnome took off somewhere along the way and got a lot of footing, then we started seeing lots of distros preferring it instead. Now that they've effectively ruined it, doing everything from cloning OSX to making "Tablet OS, desktop style" perhaps it's time to just use KDE as the default on the major distros and be done with it. Efficient hardware support should always be priority. When times change and something gets so many layers of bloat that it stops working as desired, dump it and move on. That's been the Linux philosophy from the start, even if that meant some headaches along the way until the system was inevitably better.
Unity's bad, but overheating is the killer by Ambient+Sheep · 2012-09-13 14:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

Last year I inherited a nice Acer Aspire laptop, just a year or so old. It came with that abomination called Windows Vista, which true to form managed to lunch itself (corrupting all user profiles) within 3 months of me having it. After a couple of half-hearted attempts to fix Vista, I switched to using an Ubuntu Live CD... and now I have to keep a fan sitting underneath it to stop it shutting down from overheating.
It's not that the built-in fan is inadequate, it's that it just doesn't come on for long enough. The machine warms up, the fan comes on for about 20-30 seconds, and then, inexplicably, turns itself off again, leaving the machine to get hotter and hotter until it just turns itself hard-off to protect itself. Under Vista the fan just stayed on as long as needed.
Last week I finally decided I'd had enough of this and went trawling round all the Ubuntu forums. I spent a couple of days installing lm-sensors and tinkering around with various other bits of software and various things that were suggested. Unfortunately lm-sensors can't see the fan on my machine, there's apparently one chip there it can't recognise. So it seems that I have no way to improve the fan handling on this machine, something the main install should be doing anyway without me having to tinker.
The Ubuntu forums were full of other people with similar complaints "my laptop ran nice and cool on Windows, but on Ubuntu it fries". Mainly Acers, Toshibas and Vaios by the looks of things.
I was planning on kicking Vista into the weeds, and doing a full install of Ubuntu onto this machine, but Unity (the stupid insane scrollbars more than anything else) gave me pause for thought, and now the overheating is the killer.
Until Ubuntu can actually make the fan on my laptop work properly so I can actually use the damn computer, it doesn't actually matter which fricking user interface it's lumbered with. Priorities people, priorities.