My search for “the perfect Linux operating system” this time brings me to the latest incarnation of Ubuntu, version 5.04, also known as the “Hoary Hedgehog Release”. Previously I was using Fedora Core 4, however due to some minor bugs it had, I wanted to try something different.
Introduction
My search for “the perfect Linux operating system” this time brings me to the latest incarnation of Ubuntu, version 5.04, also known as the “Hoary Hedgehog Release”. Previously I was using Fedora Core 4, however due to some minor bugs it had, I wanted to try something different. The bugs I had experienced with Fedora Core 4 weren’t all that severe mind you, and Fedora Core 4 isn’t all that bad, I suppose it served as the reason I needed to try another Linux OS. This is not the first Ubuntu release I’ve used though, as I had installed the previous release (version 4.10) at one time. Ubuntu version 4.10 was superb as a Gnome OS, though it didn’t work out so well for me when installing KDE. I know it’s rather late to release an article regarding Ubuntu 5.04, however having used it for several months I thought it would be good to write a review about it.
What Is Ubuntu?
Ubuntu is an open-source Linux operating system with financial backing from Canonical Ltd. From the official website, Ubuntu is described as “a free, open source operating system that starts with the breadth of Debian and adds regular releases (every six months), a clear focus on the user and usability (it should “Just Work”, TM) and a commitment to security updates with 18 months of support for every release. Ubuntu ships with the latest Gnome release as well as a selection of server and desktop software that makes for a comfortable desktop experience off a single installation CD.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. One of the things that makes Ubuntu great to me is the fact that Canonical goes out of their way to make sure that everyone has access to their operating system. Not only do they provide free downloads, they also provide official pressed CD-Roms that can be shipped to you free of charge. I can’t imagine how much that must cost them, but it’s much appreciated, and demonstrates the fact that Canonical is serious when it comes to providing a solid, free open-source operating system.
Test System
Installation
Ubuntu’s installer doesn’t have the eye candy or even the ease of use of the Anaconda installer that Red Hat and Fedora ships with. Most of the installation screens were easy for me to follow, while others made me read the screen several times to make sure that I wasn’t going to overwrite an important partition. Although you are really only supposed to see the installation screen once, it would be very nice if it was remade to be easier to understand, or better yet, use the Anaconda installer instead. I’m not sure if the Anaconda installer is even compatible with the Debian package system which Ubuntu uses, but it would be nice if it was.
The Desktop, Gnome 2.10
By default, the desktop environment you see after logging in is Gnome. Gnome is very solid and user friendly, with focus on being organized and easy to use. When you first log in, you see nothing on your desktop. No shortcut icons, nor device icons. Even your trash icon is located on the taskbar, rather than the actual Desktop. This is not a bad thing, as upon further inspection, you’ll see that everything you need to get started is located in the “Applications” menu, and your devices are automatically populated under the “Places” menu. For administrative changes to your PC, the “System” menu houses everything you need. The Desktop of Ubuntu is also quite fast and gets the job done.
Memory and CPU management also seems to be very good with this OS. As I’m writing this, I currently have Evolution (Email), Firefox (Web Browser), a Terminal, and Open Office running, and my CPU usage is only 21% with just 149.8MB out of my total 768MB of memory being used. This is much lower than I noticed with other distributions, even with fewer programs open.
Users of Mozilla Firefox will feel right at home with Ubuntu. Firefox is included with Ubuntu and is set up as the default browser. Web browsing with Firefox is fast and efficient, it’s themeable and the official website houses quite a few neat plugins to provide various results from RSS feeds to different toolbars. For those of you who like to chat, Gaim is included and works well. Gaim supports such services as Yahoo Instant Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger, all under one hood.
Although there’s also a KDE version of Ubuntu available (Kubuntu) there’s nothing stopping you from installing KDE in the standard Ubuntu release (KDE is another desktop manager, like Gnome, however with more focus on eye-candy). I like both KDE and Gnome, so it’s important to me that I have both, as every week I am using one or the other. For basic file management, chatting and email, Gnome hits the mark. If I’m in the mood for something fast that uses less resources (for example, gaming) I log in to KDE. Installing KDE was relatively painless using Apt, and the packages for Ubuntu are solid.
Software Management
At some point, you’ll likely feel the urge to customize and install additional software. Even though the base install comes with everything from word processors to web browsers, there’s plenty more to be found. This is where Apt comes in. Apt is a command line tool that allows you to install packages. What’s more, Apt will handle and attempt to install any dependencies those programs may have. For example, to install the game “Neverball” you can type “sudo apt-get install neverball” in a terminal, and Apt will find the Neverball game, download it, and also download any dependencies this game may have to make it work. While it takes a bit to get used to, you’ll soon realize that Apt is very powerful when it comes to adding software to your system.
Ubuntu also ships with a program called “Synaptic”. Synaptic is a front end to the Apt program, that is quite a bit easier to use. Synaptic uses your GUI, so those of you that aren’t comfortable with the terminal will still feel right at home. Synaptic gives you access to thousands of applications in any one of over ten categories, so it may become quite addictive to see what useful programs you can find.
Multimedia
Multimedia (music, movies, etc) is something that’s extremely important to me. I like to listen to a good tune or two while I work at my PC, and I also enjoy watching a DVD from time to time.
Ubuntu ships with a jukebox-style media player called “Rhythmbox” that works very well, and seems to be inspired by Apple’s iTunes software. Following the Unofficial Ubuntu Guide, I was able to get Rhythmbox to recognize MP3 files and I was listening to my music in no time. I like this program very much.
When it comes to the playing of DVD movies however, the process of installing the necessary packages and enabling DMA was as manual as it gets. I would prefer this to be done for me, but since Ubuntu is free and DVD licenses aren’t, I know that won’t ever happen. However, after setting up everything, DVD’s and pretty much all forms of multimedia are working wonderfully. In fact, when it comes to multimedia, the only irritation I had was Ubuntu still trying to use my onboard soundcard by default when I had it turned off in the bios. A quick post to the Ubuntu Forum allowed me to figure out how to fix it.
Ubuntu to the Rescue
Unfortunately last week was what I called “The Big Crash”. It was the very first time I had a hard drive give up on me, and even worse, it was my beloved 80GB Western Digital hard drive. Ubuntu 5.04 was installed on it, and the drive housed over 20GB of personal files and other things I’ve been saving over the years. Ironically, I planned on backing up my drive that weekend, but my slacking in this area ultimately cost me dearly. Or did it?
With the help of a friend, whom is an IT pro, I was able to recover most of my data from that drive, as I was informed that it was probably the last time I was ever going to read anything from it at all. The Ubuntu livecd was the tool of choice that I was told to use. With built in Nautilus file sharing, I was able to transfer most of my important files to my other PC, saving years of important things. Take my advice, as I learned the hard way, backing up your important data is a must. If all else fails, have a livecd ready. Thankfully each Ubuntu release also ships with the equivalent livecd.
Ubuntu, Not for Power Users?
I consider a “power user” to be anyone who tweaks his PC for ultimate performance, not the casual user that primarily uses his PC’s to look up information or to chat. For the latter, Ubuntu fits the bill very well. While I’m not sure it’s safe to consider myself a power user, I definitely like to get the most out of my PC, and tweaking is something I find myself doing daily. Recently, I’ve had quite a few struggles trying to compile a customized kernel from Kernel.org, which is something that I like to do after installing any Linux distribution. Ubuntu caused me quite a few headaches in this area, more so than any other version I’ve used. After compiling my custom kernel, Ubuntu refused to boot it, giving a nasty Kernel VFS error. Defeated, I fired up Synaptic and installed the latest K7 kernel, only to have my system crash on an hourly basis. As a final defeat, I resorted to installing an older kernel, namely version 2.6.10-5-k7, which so far works very stable and fast, however I’d prefer to have the newest kernel available. This experience is what caused me to assume that Ubuntu is designed for the casual user, not for someone like me whom insists on the latest kernel version.
Final Thoughts
Despite the few problems I had, Ubuntu is good enough for me to continue using for a while, possibly indefinitely if the next release continues the same pattern of improvement that version 5.04 had over its predecessor. With what seems to be true dedication to the open-source market, Canonical has a very solid operating system with Ubuntu, and I’ll gladly recommend it to anyone looking for a great beginner’s system.
-Jeremey LaCroix
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
Reviews, reviews everywhere nor anytime to… use?
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.
Ubuntu is not for the power user, it’s for the nice simple user(maybe). APT/Synaptic is really great for getting software, simple, but not all software. I don’t like security holes and bug fixes back ported in Ubuntu, prefer the latest release as it is, I have a problem in Ubuntu, no other distro, using Firefox to access my ISP’s web-based email site, there’s a conflict so I can’t even load the site. I’ve had this problem with every single version of Ubuntu, but no other distro, and can only get my mail through POP like Thunderbird or with Mozilla. Mozilla works fine, no problem, but Firefox can’t access site. Also, Ubuntu does not include any propietary software, like Real Player and Adobe Acrobat Reader, which both Real and Helix does not work on 1 site I go to, but Real in Windows works no problem, and can’t figure out how to get VLC in Ubuntu, only in Debian. Also, have had a number of problems trying to access C drive, Ubuntu is installed in D. I also don’t like when you set up a root account after everything is installed and up and running, when it asks you for password to make system chages, sometimes it wants account login password, sometimes root password. Why doesn’t Ubuntu demand only a sperate root password because anyone who has an account, can make a lot of system changes, but not everything. So I don’t consider Ubuntu safe from non-tech users who use the machine, I prefer to have my password, and no one can access anything without my root password, so I can be confident nothing can go wrong because they can’t change 1 single dot, so that nothing can go wrong with system, ergo, I have nothing to fix.
Amarok 1.3 came out recently, and it’s not going to be in Breezy because they’re already past the feature freeze, so do you know what this means? You have to wait 8 MONTHS for a software update. You don’t have to do that in OS X or Windows. Pathetic.
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.
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.
we’re over hoary.bring on breezy.
I switched to Ubuntu three months ago. When I bought a new 512mb stick (for a 1.5gb total), I had to recompile the kernel in order to allow more than 1gb (which is the default in Ubuntu). The only hard thing was compiling the nVidia modules. But I did in around two hours, and got a perfect system working. Unluckily, in my last recompilation I forgot to add some USB modules, and now everytime I umount my flash USB disk I need to reboot… will be fixing that soon.
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
The VFS error suggests some kind of problem with the kernel / bootloader configuration – it sounds too early in the boot process to be the fault of the distro.
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.
Ubuntu is slow. After succumbing to all the Ubuntu hype, I installed it on a PII-450 with 192 MB of RAM, and it took upwards of about 4 minutes to boot, and another 60 seconds until anything on the desktop was responsive. Even opening a Nautilus window took ages. Unacceptable.
Windows XP and Server 2003 ran snappy and with ease on the same hardware. Why is modern Linux so fat and bloated?
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.
>>Windows XP and Server 2003 ran snappy and with ease on the same hardware. Why is modern Linux so fat and bloated?
You are talking about the GUI (KDE, GNOME, …) right, not Linux?
I know what you’re going to suggest … You’re going to suggest I use some window manager designed for a 386.
When I say “Linux” I refer to the specific distribution I’ve mentioned. ALL modern Linux distributions are fat and slow, with the possible exception of spartan stuff like Slackware, but even that I’m not sure about anymore.
The average user doesn’t care whether they should refer to it as Linux, GNU/Linux, Redhat, or Fedora Core — what matters is that it’s slow on their system and they don’t like it.
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).
A stock install of OS X does seem a tad sluggish on my 1.42 GHz Mac Mini, but a quick disabling of some animations/effects, and it’s generally very fluid and responsive.
I can’t say the same about GNOME/KDE on my 2.4 GHz Athlon 64/2 GB RAM. They feel jerky, like a n00bian driving standard.
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!
Ubuntu Breezy is nearing completion. You can already download an ISO image that is quite stable and has a much more up to date kernel and other software.
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.
I’m an ubuntu fan myself, but couldn’t people just stop reviewing ubuntu?
I think everyone is getting a little bit tired of hearing about it, especially since we are just over one month from the final Breezy Badger release. At this point in time, I feel reviewing a distro release that is almost six months old is a pure waste of energy. Bring on some news about the modularization of X.org, GCC4, stuff like that in Breezy. So… yeah, I think too many reviews might just get our audience bored or even reluctant to read anything related to that. Just my two cents.
i tried ubuntu. no winmodem drivers for amd64 (binary blob drivesr… sigh)…
so reinstall i386 version… meh comes back with irq=255 , so again no modem support….
since i live in the moutains, all i got is dialup.. once installed, its like every other debian install (ie: hopeless for developers as it does not install header files for anything as a base package. aka no ncurses.h etc).
its great that has the c/c++ compilers on the cd, but what good are they if only have headers files for libc??
i could have fixed this had i had my dialup access… meh.. lucent winmodems.
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.
it is not that the gui is slow.
it is not that the os is slow either
it just is that there is services running that you do not need.
BTW – you pick which OS I was referring to, they all have this problem
The entire system is slow. Don’t tell me about services — while they’re a problem (WTF needs BIND/NFS running on a desktop install?), that doesn’t fix GNOME’s/KDE’s slowness.
There is a claim that Ubuntu is not for power users. I consider myself a power user, I’ve been using Linux exclusively for almost 8 years now. I’ve used the whole spectrum of Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, and Gentoo, and I’m a programmer and Linux Sysadmin by trade. I definately don’t fit into the “casual user who uses the computer to browse the internet and read e-mail” category. I use Ubuntu for my office workstation and at home because I want something I don’t have to mess with. I want something that I know will work without me. I get paid to administer Debian servers at work, and don’t want to have to worry about taking care of my system when I get home. Ubuntu does a great job of spanning the gap between casual users and power users. It is a system that is powerful enough for a power user, but easy enough for the casual user.
–John
Debian Pure (www.debianpure.com) offers a better product. It takes half the time to install and is fully compatible with the official Debian repositories. Plus, it comes fully loaded with all the usual plugins (flash, java, mplayer, w32 codecs, etc). I’ve had Debian Pure on my desktop for about a month now and it has been great so far. I’m looking forward to their 1.0 release.
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.
Amarok 1.3 came out recently, and it’s not going to be in Breezy because they’re already past the feature freeze,
You have to wait 8 MONTHS for a software update.
For the majority of real amarok users that isn’t very significant.Those who really need an upgrade know what they are doing and are mostly capable to simply compile from source.
ubuntu for me:
stupid debian installer, i have to prepare my hdd before install
stupid debian 2 hours installation(on my pIII 550mhz 224ram compaq)
well after the X: a perfect synaptic! and apt-get! – installing first xmms – the all x crashes when i try to play a song, i have to total reset…hydrogen drum mashine after this – even dont start…bye bye, dear ubuntu, just a next wasted time in teying some distro for me…and the biggest fuck is, that 89% of free cds are tottaly scrached and unusuable!! it even cant boot from them!!!
Ubuntu Sucks. Fedora Sucks. Gentoo Sucks. Actually, most distros suck. Don’t even get me started on Slackware, it’s deader than any BSD. I think Linux has potential, but that’s damn sad every single distro plain sucks.
Downloading SuSE…
care to expound as to your reasoning for thinking all distros suck?
ubuntu user and fan here. but i honestly think there is too much ubuntu review. people are gonna get bored and tired.
if people still insist on doing ubuntu reviews, why not concentrate on future version such breezy.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BreezyGoals
some goals looks on target for the release and some goals have been defered.
# MD Athlon based system, 900mhz;
# 768MB of system memory;
# Nvidia based graphics board with 256MB of video memory;
# 40GB Seagate IDE Hard Disk;
# DVD drive and CD-Drive.
Are you serious about your specs, if yes you probably ended up upgrading the wrong parts.
I think that question dosn’t need asking anymore. How about a Breezey review, or beta review?
well i just saw, that the critical comment for ubuntu i wrote last night was deleted. That means, that this is my third or fourth and last comment in this – linux-communist site. bye to all and good luck with open-feet source.
First, I don’t have anything against Ubuntu, but please, stop revieweing the damn Hoary already. We know it’s out, we know it’s ok, and we know it ever since it was released. Enough about it, I find it a waste of space and time. Review the newset stuff, which people are inetrested in, or don’t know about it much yet.
As of the professionalism of the article writer… when someone struggles to compile a custom kernel, and blames it here and there without having any clue whatsoever, he’d better stop naming himself anything besides a curious amateur.
Amarok *1.3* won’t ever be ported. The Qt4 version will be amarok 2.0 that may or may not be ported.
Glad my distro keeps on track with everything.Amarok 1.3 included,so is latest KDE and kernel 2.6.12*.So my humble question without any intent to troll is:what is the key feature of Ubuntu?Can’t be new packages,can’t be stable either.What does Ubuntu have that debian doesn’t?
> > 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.
The last time I tried Ubuntu, it has destroyed the geometry of my hd. I do not remember the version, it was one of the first official release. Fortunately, I could reinstall win98.
Does anybody know if this has been improved and fixed.
I tried to get info on that, but my researchs failed.
Now everytime, I test a Linux distro, I’m jittering.
Thanks for any answers.
Ofcourse,my bad 🙁
I had the same kernel compiling issues when using ubuntu.
First of all, there were a lot of libs missing needed for compiling a kernel from kernel.org (e.g. libncurses-dev).
I didn’t had the problem booting it, that part went fine, only it took me ages to fix all the errormessages during boot.
I’m a dedicated Slackware user myself and Slack’s using a clean kernel from kernel.org without any modifications like Fedora and Ubuntu do, and if you compile a kernel under a default slack installation, everyhting goes very smooth and you have it running within a few minutes.
Ubuntu is nice for beginners but that’s it, to be honest I don’t like a single bit of it, i’ll stay with Slackware 10.1
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?
My God the reviewer is the king of astroturfers! Casually his hard disk brokes just in time to let him try and show us ubuntu live….
Mario Giammarco
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.
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
“Snappy”
Who made that word? “Snappier” Why? Why use that word? I hate when people use that word to describe the speed of their computer/OS. It sounds like a fanboy word.
For that matter, I hate these constant fights about the speed of XYZ OS/distro. Isn’t it obvious by now that the difference is not black and white, but a bit of grey? It seems to me that there is enough evidence to suggest that different configurations of hardware coupled with the subjective feeling of ‘snappiness’ different people have or need make the whole arguement moot? Can’t we argue about something more worthwhile, like whether my dad can beat up your dad?
I like Ubuntu because it doesn’t change the look and feel of Gnome like Fedora does.
Here were my bad experiences though installing on a Dell Insprion 4100 laptop.
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.
2) The hard disk kept shutting off every 5 seconds. The spin up and spin down was driving me nuts. I had to research and find the laptop-mode and set to off.
3) Intermittent pauses for now apparent reason. The asnwers is to kill the power daemon.
4) WiFi support. I have a linksys 54g card and a dlink DWL-650 rev. M card. I couldn’t get either one to recognize automatically. The DLink I tried ndiswrapper with and to no avail.
5) Java Support under firefox. That took a while to get working and I had to make some symlinks I think to get it work after installing the jdk/jre.
I’m a software engineer. I had trouble getting some of this stuff working without lots of time on google. How can we expect adoption to the masses like this. There’s no way my mom could do any of this stuff on her own.
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.
Why doesn’t this happen automatically during install?
Some people want to have control and not everything automated.
WD are not good hard drive then
(I’m joking !)
I prefer the Ubuntu installer to Anaconda. Sure it’s ugly, but you don’t have to do anything. In my ideal world the installers would go even more in this direction. The user should just plop in a live CD, answer a few questions (with defaults ripped from the windows partition if applicable), and hit the ‘install this’ button.
Michael
This can be caused by forgetting to tack on the “–initrd” to the make-kpkg compile command or by deselecting the CramFS filesystem during the kernel config (xconfig).
> 1) KDE was not an option to install at install time.
> You have to add that using Synaptic Package manager.
You may want to try the sister distro Kubuntu then. It draws from the same pool of packages but comes with KDE instead of GNOME.
or type:
# sudo apt-get install kubuntu-base
to get your spiffy KDE desktop
I think a more useful review would include how easy it is to set up some shares for backup from Windows machines and sharing a printer, again for use from Windows machines.
A “Power User” would have no problems googling for a howto to help out with the kernel compilation procedure, and would probably also know that ubuntu is based on debian, so it would be worth looking up a debian specific howto (like the one at newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html). The only problem I had was that the the howto doesn’t tell you to build an initrd image, but adding the ‘–initrd’ flag to make-kpkg’s arguments list isn’t really that hard, is it? I’m currently happily running on 2.6.12.
I also have trouble comprehending why the author had so many more issues with setting up DVD support than he did setting up mp3 support – following sets of instructions from the same guide (ubuntuguide.org), that were (for me anyhow) just as easy to follow as each other.