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I actually think that the Ubuntu installer is elegant - simple, fast and effective. It suits its purpose well, and with Breezy the second stage install will be unified with a similar progress bar.

On performance, Ubuntu does the job extremely well. My computer is really fast, even with the equipped i686 kernel.

I agree. Ubuntu's installer does its job well. there are definitely parts that could use better documentation for newbies (partitioning for those who choose to leave the defaults is probably one, though I don't really remember clearly at this point)

I do hope that the Ubuntu people *don't* follow this reviewer's advice regarding installers - Anaconda is a horrible installer - way too inflexible and crash-prone.

You are aware that backports exists, aren't you?

Yes that is a problem in general with GNU/Linux software i.e. Being reliant on the distro to produce packages rather than the actual developers. You could always compile your own version. But that is probably not an answer for you.

It's unfair to call it pathetic - Windows and OS X don't include a large selection of apps at all, Ubuntu gives you access to hundreds or thousands that are built to work with your system.

There's nothing stopping you installing it yourself, it just requires a manual install and won't get automatic security updates - rather like using Windows or MacOS in fact.

(also, there's the backports Apt repository where you should be able to get new versions of software installable automatically on a best-effort basis - that's likely to be enough for your usage)

Amarok 1.3 will not be ported to Windblows, so I guess you'll have to wait until Hell freezes over before you install it on a Windblows box.

Wouldn't be so sure about that. KDE 4.0 will be based on Qt4, which of course has been GPLed for Windows as well now, so Amarok for Windows might be less than two years away.

> > Amarok 1.3 will not be ported to Windblows, so I
> > guess you'll have to wait until Hell freezes over
> > before you install it on a Windblows box.

> Wouldn't be so sure about that. KDE 4.0 will be
> based on Qt4, which of course has been GPLed for
> Windows as well now, so Amarok for Windows might be
> less than two years away.

Maybe he was referring to this:
http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/41-porting-amaroK-to-windows.ht...

Amarok *1.3* won't ever be ported. The Qt4 version will be amarok 2.0 that may or may not be ported.

Maybe instead of posting on online forums complaining, you spend the same amount of time you look for the solution, you would become aware of Ubuntu Backports. Ubuntu also comes with gcc...although Backports should have you covered.

sudo apt-get install linux-image-686

the 386 kernel doesn't support more than 512mb ram as I recall, for reasons of the architechture.

sudo apt-get install linux-image-686

the 386 kernel doesn't support more than 512mb ram as I recall, for reasons of the architechture.

Huh?
Even if the Ubuntu kernel devs decided to compile the kernel without high-memory support and with the default __PAGE_OFFSET (0xc0000000), the Ubuntu kernel should be able to access up to 1GB of memory. (896MB to be exact).
If you choose to reconfigure the kernel by hand, an i386 (or actually i686) kernel can access up to 64GB using the PAE extensions. (CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G)

Please don't spread FUD.

Gilboa

What?

Who patched and compiled the kernel/configured the bootloader? The answer starts and ends with U. Do you think that the kernel and bootloader are vanilla, and just drop in components which every distro uses? Distros generally patch, tweak and fettle the vanilla kernel to suit what they think is their target audience. So if there are kernel/bootloader issues, the first port of call is the distro.

Matt

Sorry, the error I was referring to was specifically the VFS error at boot. This was on a kernel the author built from scratch from kernel.org; I think it's extremely unlikely that had anything to do with Ubuntu.

The stability regressions with the stock kernel, OTOH, can be blamed on the distro.

Ummmm....duh. Reading the article would inform you he got the VFS error on his own custom configured and compiled kernel from kernel.org, not the one provided by Ubuntu.

In regards to him installing the latest kernel, that kernel wasn't meant for general consumption. It was not marked stable, you are supposed to stick with 2.6.10. The one he installed was most likely 2.6.11. I'm not sure why exactly it is in the apt repositories, because lots of people make the same mistake the reviewer did.

hear hear

>> Windows XP and Server 2003 ran snappy and with ease on the same hardware. Why is modern Linux so fat and bloated?

the same hardware being: p2-450 192MB RAM ... I just got one of those here (it's a 900 celeron actually, I pulled out half of its 512MB RAM). XP boot time: 6 minutes. XP performance: sluggish. Time to start Eclipse: 5 minutes. Mind you, these machines (I'm at work) usually run 98SE -- kind of slow, too (we run Delphi and Eclipse). Kubuntu Hoary is snappier in everything (than both 98 and XP, with 256MB memory) EXCEPT Eclipse startup... it loses to 98, but not to XP.

In my laptop (700MHz Crusoe, 384 MB memory) things are similar, except for the fact that it takes loooonger to boot (because of hotplug, I don't know what is exactly the problem... yet)

Windows XP and Server 2003 ran snappy on a PII-450 with 192 MB of RAM??

I haven't seen buntutu run but man what a ludicrous troll, XP runs like crap on a pIII-600 with 512mb here, 2k runs even worse and I listen to people rant about the performance on their 1.8ghz machines all day long. Ubuntu must REALLY suck, I'm almost going to have to try it to see, a five minute boot I mean really?

Windows XP and Server 2003 ran snappy on a PII-450 with 192 MB of RAM??

Yes, that is FUD.

I cant even get Windows 2003 INSTALLED on a machine with 192MB of RAM. The installer told me that a have too little RAM.

Linux with KDE/Gnome (and even XFCE 4 these days) are indeed generally slower in performance and responsiveness than ie. Windows XP.

However, it's not that big of a deal. Other major operating systems 'feel' slow too (OS X comes to mind), but somehow it never really gets that bad that it gets annoying. I sure have no problems with it using Ubuntu/Gnome and Tiger. And no, I don't have super-duper hardware (check http://thom.expert-zone.com for details on my hw).

Other major operating systems 'feel' slow too (OS X comes to mind)>>

And yet, I've yet to have the same experience with my PowerMac with 10.3 or 10.4 and I'm using the stock video card that shipped with my MDD.

The XP computer I'm writing this on has more UI slowness than Ubuntu 4.10 on my Pismo. I find that dedicated video ram makes a *huge* difference in resposiveness and crash resistance. (This work box has "vampire video" and no way to add a video card.)

One of the reason I stopped using Linux was because it was pretty slow compared to me XP. And I can't be bothered to learn how to compile a kernel or any of that nonsense. I've got work to do!

Nearing completion? Hardly. There are many bugs and regressions to be fixed. The release is almost 2 months away. It hasn't even reached the preview stage (current at colony 3). Breezy has not been declared stable and should NOT be suggested to new users by any means.

You know, for something like $50 you can get a good quality controller based modem. It sounds like that would be a worthwhile investment for someone like yourself.

I have a USR 5610 modem myself. Don't use it, but from what i can tell Ubuntu recognizes it.

I wonder why Ubuntu doesn't care for modem users and
doesn't prepare some extra CD isos with popular software like that from Knopix or Fedora.

If they really distribute the win32 codecs I'm guessing they are not legal, same again for Macromedia's Flash.

Still I think that Debian "Pure" is a bogus distribution, there's no real information on the webpage you cite, and they use the Debian name despite being unrelated to Debian real - a sure sign of shadyness.

I think calling it "minimally maintained Debian with only support for Desktops on x86" would be fairer; although obviously that's not a great marketting name.

Found this distro on the backwaters of the web somewhere & it was everything I was looking for in a pure Debian install -- except for its use of KDE 3.3. instead of the latest & greatest 3.4. I upgraded to unstable to get 3.4 but couldn't find it, so I fell back to Kanotix.

care to expound as to your reasoning for thinking all distros suck?

> > Amarok *1.3* won't ever be ported.

> Glad my distro keeps on track with everything.
> Amarok 1.3 included,so is latest KDE and kernel 2.6.12.

Erm, I was referring to a port to Windows, as did the posts I replied to. Not about amarok in (K)Ubuntu.

I used to use Slackware and loved it. Still do. But the one area i hate is installing packages. Jesus! Trying to install something with many dependencies is a nightmare. Having to trawl the net for various libs and such really starts to grate after a while. So now i use Ubuntu and love it. Slackware, imo, while being good for what it is, is really going nowhere.

If you ever go back to ubuntu, try kernel-package to compile your own kernels.

$ aptitude -r install linux-tree kernel-package libncurses-dev

What error messages during boot? I boot the linux-k7 kernel (Hoary here at home) and I don't see any error messages in my dmesg...

I'm running Slackware -current and Ubuntu, and I like both. Slackware can't be beat on my desktop (and for the guy who hated installing packages, heard of Swaret?), but on my Centrino laptop I need ACPI and a good 2.6 kernel for the wireless driver. While I could get ACPI working with Slack, it was only with the 2.4 kernel. I couldn't get a 2.6.12 kernel to boot to save my life (and I've been compiling kernels in Slackware for about three years). So I threw on Ubuntu and it's a dream. I tried at least a dozen distros, from Suse to Gentoo, and Ubuntu was the best with that hardware (1.6 pentium m, 1gig ram, 60 gig hard drive, intel graphics (and everything else)). CPU frequency scaling is perfect, wireless comes up during boot, etc. I couldn't keep it on my desktop (noticeably slower than Slack), and configuring Fluxbox took some hand-jamming, but it does what I need on the laptop. Why can't that be enough?

Perhaps you should try running it on a real 64 MB machine and not through a VM?

I've got Ubuntu installed on a 6 year old Dell laptop for my wife she finds it much snappier than Windows XP was.

One of the selling point of Linux is its ability to run on old and low spec machines. I tried to install Fedora 3 (with gnome and open office selected) on a VM with 64M RAM, 4G HD (the kind of machine NT4 runs on happy), and it failed miserably. When the RAM increased to 256M, it runs happyly. Maybe Linux is NOT that suitable for low end destop.

If you looking to use Linux on a low-end machine, choose a low-end Linux.
Try DSL (www.damnsmalllinux.org), slackware with XFCE, etc.

I tried DSL on a AMD 486/100 machine with 16MB (?) and it actually ran just fine. (Not sure about the memory size, though... could have been 32MB)

Gilboa

Oh ya, I forgot - I also had to manually configure some files to allow me to mount my windows xp partition. Why doesn't this happen automatically during install?

1) KDE was not an option to install at install time. You have to add that using Synaptic Package manager. That's really trivial except you have to add each kde package by selecting them individually.

Or you could type one line on a terminal:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Cheers,
Daniel.