I’d better start by admitting that I’m a fan of KDE. It’s not because it works like Windows, but for the quality of the tools available. However, a GUI is just a way of doing something and I think I’ve been a bit dismissive of the Gnome desktop up to now. I read a few reviews of Ubuntu, looked at their web site and decided to have a look. I wanted a general purpose (desktop) distribution and an opportunity to get to know the Gnome utilities.They do a Live CD; you download and burn an ISO, put it in your drive, reboot and voila! Instant Gnome in glorious brown. I played with the Live CD for a while, then decided to get to know it better by installing the distro to my hard drive. Ubuntu does not let you do this from the Live CD, you have to download a different ISO. Not an insurmountable problem for broadband users, it takes me about 3 hours, but Mepis Linux allows you to install from their Live CD. This would be a nice feature to include.
Ubuntu is Debian with a nice make-over and a mission statement. Debian isn’t easy to install, Ubuntu makes it easier. I was unimpressed with the partitioning tool. I wanted to keep my existing Swap and /home partitions and install Ubuntu in my / partition. It was not happy with my choices and only allowed my to continue with the installation after I had also formatted my /home partition. Fortunately I’d backed up everything to CD before I started. There is an automatic partitioner (that I didn’t use). I’m fairly confident about messing with partitioning tools, I know what I want to do and how to do it, but it would be nice if there was a bit of guidance. I would have given up without installing it if I had been doing this for the first time. I still think that Mandrake’s partition tool (Diskdrake) is hard to beat.
The installer is visually unattractive but it works. It detected everything except my internet connection. I usually judge a distribution by how long it takes me to get on-line. Most detect the DHCP server on the modem and just work. If you can’t easily get on-line, how will you download fixes and upgrades? Once up and running, the connection was easy to configure and far easier than setting up Win XP.
One choice I didn’t like was that a Root password isn’t used. I made myself an account with a password and expected to be asked for a Root password to use. No, it uses “sudo” with your user account. My Mac does the same, easier for Windows users, I suppose, but not the way I would choose to do it. They seem to have taken a few other ideas from Apple. The menu system is at the top of the screen, the interface is fairly minimalist. One thing they might learn from them is colour choices. Ubuntu is a Zulu concept (humanity to others) and they have tried to give the desktop an African flavour. Africa is full of bright colours; they have chosen a light chocolate brown for everything (everything that isn’t grey, that is). If you like African themes, why not use some of the other earth colours like reds or ochres? Of course, this is Linux, you can change anything that you don’t like.
Ubuntu uses an automount system which seems to work very well. Put a music CD in the drive and it plays, put a data CD in and it opens a Nautilus (file manager) window. My USB removable drive worked too. It also detected a Win XP machine on the LAN. What I don’t like is Nautilus as a file manager. I’ve used Konqueror for a few years, Nautilus seems very crude in comparison. If you are navigating to /usr/bin you are left with 3 windows, one for /. one for usr, one for bin. Click on a file in bin and another damned window opens. These have to be closed when you’ve finished. Presumably there is something somewhere to tell Nautilus to open folders in the same window, but it isn’t in “preferences” and I couldn’t see it in the Gnome Help files. I miss Konqueror’s html display. Click on a saved web page and it’s displayed, Nautilus fired up Firefox. Gnome gives me the impression that it’s just a front end for Linux, like Windows 3.1 on DOS 6.2. I copied and pasted my backup CD files to my home directory, then realised that I didn’t want some of them. Of course, the original file permissions from the CD were preserved, so I had to go down through each imported directory, select all files and alter the permissions before I could delete them. I don’t remember ever having to do that in Konqueror, it will alter the permissions of all the sub directories if you alter the permissions of a parent folder. Once I got all my rubbish in the trash, it still wouldn’t remove them. I tried to go into the trash folder and alter permissions, but it crashed when I tried. I did like the integrated CD burning tool in Nautilus. Just drag and drop your files and burn. There isn’t much to the interface, but it worked fine.
I liked Firefox, the default browser. It was quite easy to get my machine on-line. Under Computer>System Configuration>Networking was a beautifully simple tool. I just typed in a few values (I told it to use my ethernet card as the way to get on the net and use DHCP for the IP address and it worked). Ubuntu email is handled by Evolution, an Outlook clone. It’s OK, if you want something to do a similar job to Outlook.
The excellent Synaptic package manager is included, making installation of new software easy. However, it only lists the packages that the Ubuntu team have tested with the distribution. If you want to install other packages (how would you know if you were new?) you have to either instruct Synaptic or edit /etc/apt/sources.list. Their web site gives useful details.
I tried to play a Metallica DVD but Totem, the software provided, threw up its hands and instantly admitted defeat. I know that the code to read DVDs is available, but apparently not in the Gnome world. Mepis, for example, quickly downloaded the required library for Xine and played the same DVD without any difficulty. I gave up googling and decided that Totem could stay broken. Rhythmbox, their music player, had a list of internet radio stations to listen to. If you tried to make it work, it just stopped responding. I even tried to load it via Firefox, which them loaded Rhythmbox, which stopped reponding. That too remained broken. The Gnome CD player worked OK, connecting to an on-line database for track listings. However, it didn’t find my Soundgarden CD and there was no way to change the database details.
Ubuntu comes with Open Office.org’s office suite. I like OO.org, but what about the Gnome Office suite? Abiword and Gnumeric are both good replacements for MS Word and Excel and are not so greedy on memory as OO.org. If you are running Ubuntu on a slower machine, OO.org is not a good choice. The version included in Ubuntu 1.4 was 1.1.2, the version on OO.prg’s web site is 1.1.4.
Of course, you can install any package you like with Debian. Ubuntu provides you with what the Ubuntu team thinks is the best tool for the job. There’s one web browser, one mail client, one chat client etc. This is good for beginners, but I’d say that Ubuntu isn’t the ideal distribution to learn how to use Linux on. I realise that much of my criticism is directed at the Gnome desktop, rather than Ubuntu’s distribution, but that is what they have chosen to include. It’s not going to appeal to experienced Debian users, its Gnome tools are not really going to attract converts from Windows and the dull brown isn’t going to win friends from Apple. There’s a lot that is good in Ubuntu, their attitude (mission statement) attracted me, the web site is very professional and easy to navigate (and uses yellow and red, not brown) but the product itself has several failings could do with a bit more work.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
This looks like a review with trolling in mind. It’s like a KDE-fan has read all the recent hype about Ubuntu and decided to post a “review” which seems to only talk about all the things he didn’t like or that didn’t work for him. Every paragraph talks about something negative!
Hey, how about you go install Ubuntu, THEN install KDE, THEN review it!? Why aren’t we seeing “Ubuntu for the KDE user” reviews?
Waste of time reading it, luckily it didn’t go into any detail, the reviewer obviously wrote this review after 30 minutes of use.
..but the product itself has several failings could do with a bit more work.
That’s why we have new versions 🙂
BTW, you can always set a root password in Ubuntu. Since you’re not the average Linux newbie this shouldn’t be a problem for you. The default behaviour is much better for simple users (sudo and no root logins). Expert users can still do the root thing.
-fooks
Why are there only KDE folks writing about Ubuntu?
I’ve been using Ubuntu for a while now and I would have to agree with some of the writers comments. The reason I switched to Ubuntu was because every other distribution (besides gentoo which I use on special projects) seem to be flighty these days.
You had to do 1 or 2 tricks to get mp3s and DVDs to play, which makes sense seaming how this is backed by a company. Both of these technologies are not open and have high-profile risks so I don’t blame Ubuntu for that. Besides it took me 1 minute to do a quick google search and add mp3s and DVDs.
I have to agree woth greg on the
… obviously wrote this review after 30 minutes of use.
point. I would say a bit less then 30 minutes though…
I agree with the author, Ubuntu could use more work, but then again, what really could use more work is your article. Next time you try to write one, try to get a clou beforehand.
“I know that the code to read DVDs is available, but apparently not in the Gnome world.”
I mean, come on, how uninformed can you be.
Pff, how many Ubuntu reviews are we still gonna see on OSnews? I’ve had it by now…
Pff, how many Ubuntu reviews are we still gonna see on OSnews? I’ve had it by now…
As a huge Ubuntu fan I agree on this one.
I must begin saying I’m a Debian user and use GNOME for all day work and pleasure. I’ve tried KDE a few times, but couldn’t convince myself of it being superior to GNOME. I’m not trolling, and I will explain why:
We, humans, have different ways of thinking, different ways of achieving our work or enjoy our digital moments. The guy who uses a Mac knows why he uses it, and he probably won’t change it doesn’t matter how much I praise about Linux, GNOME or KDE or whatever I like. But if I like more GNOME than KDE because it’s simpler and doesn’t get in my path, that doesn’t mean everyone out there will think or feel the way I do and need me to tell him what are the negative things, because it’s just subjective as telling you blond girls are better than brunette ones.
This sort of comparisons won’t help OSS. We must respect people choices. If you like KDE, go use it. If you like IceWM, go use it. I don’t care. But don’t be such subjective.
I really don’t think this article gets the point of what ubuntu is like. I’ve been using the distro for some weeks now and I can say it’s absolutely not that bad as it seems from the article. A simple interface to the known power of Debian.
In my opinion a really good Distro.
I tried Ubuntu on three PCs. It wouldn’t boot on any of them. Knoppix just worked.
No, I’d never used either of them before. Just wanted to test a Live Linux CD.
Ubuntu would show the funky logo splash screen then fill the monitor with some hdb error.
“Buffer IO error on hdb”
I had major problems with totem and gstreamer. Frames were choppy and subtitles cut off.
But I thought that an 8x AGP nvidia should be able to handle the load, so I persevered…
gxine seems to work well. But you need to get the win32 codecs and other stuff from the marillat repository.
Speaking of DVDs, perhaps if we’re lucky the ubuntu folks will start shipping their distro on DVD with extra packages.
To anyone not having used Ubuntu I suggest NOT reading this article because it only focuses on the negative side. 30-minute articles are not much respected by me either, please next time spend at least an hour with the OS before writing an article about it!
“Ubuntu: could do with a bit more work”: The title is quite true though…I think next release, Hoary, will include that “extra work”..
You dislike that the root account is not used? Please explain so that we can follow your logic.
Let me make a wild guess here: You tried the same CD on three PCs, didn’t you?
lol! Good point!
I checked out the last live-cd and agree with some of what is said here. A few notes:
– I absolutely agree that brown is not an ideal default color. Blue or possibly other “earth” colors would be better if they want to go that way.
– It didn’t detect my internet connection either
– I don’t get this sudo thing. I get the impression that this a distribution that is supposed to be used by non-techincal users. When I start some software it just doesn’t work without any clear indication why, and apparently I have to figure out on my own by searching the net for random postings that tells me I have to start the console and write sudo passwd or something… Wouldn’t it be (much) better to set an administration password at startup/install? I might misunderstood something here. I’m puzzled.
– it didn’t mount my harddisk partitions. All the useful stuff you need to do requires easy access to the data you already have, so I am puzzled about that choice as well.
– I don’t like the verbose output at startup. It is like having wire sticking out of the box.
Overall, Ubuntu does indeed have a lot of promise… I’ll be checking out the coming live cd’s
Of course. You think I should burn one cd per pc?
If you always get an error about the cdrom you could at least try to burn an other cd as it’s pretty clear then imho that the cd simply is borked.
Why do you need a root password? “sudo su -” will get you into a root shell just as easily as “su” would with a root password.
Most of this reviewers problems can be solved by either apt-get, the Unofficial Ubuntu Guide, or both.
How about this for a deal- people that aren’t willing to use Ubuntu’s community shouldn’t be reviewing the product. Mr. Spacecraft has said from day one that his whole point aws to build a vibrant community so that Ubuntu users have the support net they need. Almost every problem mentioned here (and in most Ubuntu reviews I’ve seen on this site) can be fixed with these two things and some work:
the guide
http://www.ubuntuguide.org/
and the forum:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/
Geez. Its not hard. I’m fairly green and I figured it out. I almost refuse to believe that people that with the Linux experiance most of these complaining Ubuntu reviewers they don’t know how to use google better. I mean…..you type Ubuntu and the within the first 5 results both the guide and the forum appear.
Wake me when the preview release comes and someone that used Ubuntu more than a day reviews it……
“- I absolutely agree that brown is not an ideal default color. Blue or possibly other “earth” colors would be better if they want to go that way. ”
Last time I checked earth was brown … maybe you mean water?
But seriously: I like the default theme of Ubuntu because it’s NOT the standard-blue-and-clouds-in-the-sky look. And if you don’t like it, change it. This isn’t OS X after all …
>
Last time I checked earth was brown … maybe you mean water?
>
right, that came out wrong… I meant either the non-earth color blue, or alternatively, other earth colors than brown.
>
Almost every problem mentioned here (and in most Ubuntu reviews I’ve seen on this site) can be fixed with these two things and some work:
>
No, that is completly wrong! No one should ever have to search for anything or read any manual. It should be self explanatory and just work. Anything less is a bug.
Networking printing needs so much work…
Nevermind that in gnome, the printing dialog has been broken for about 7 months, :9
The problem is with the applications not using it, that’s all.
Plus, “nopasswd” in /etc/sudoers is so nice
I had the same problem until I turned DMA on manually with hdparm. The kernel should do it itself, it’s a bug (in Hoary’s 2.6.10 kernel at least) other kernels I tried don’t have this problem.
No, that is completly wrong! No one should ever have to search for anything or read any manual. It should be self explanatory and just work. Anything less is a bug. <p>Umm..
Will….
These things are computers, not appliances. I’ve never seen an OS in my life that didn’t give me some problems that forced me to learn something to fix it. Even the wonderful OSX gave me some trouble the first time I tried it. I like the learning and I like the trade off for versatility. But if you are a believer that EVERYTHING must “just work” for EVERYBODY, then I suggest you buy a game console and use that only. Its the closest you’ll ever get to your Utopia. Something might work well for you, but it will never work well for everybody. A jack of all trades is good at nothing.
Meanwhile, thousands of users enjoy the FLEXIBLILTY and EASE OF USE of the average Ubuntu install.
– Don’t like Gnome
– Don’t like Nautilus
– Don’t like the default theme
– Don’t like Sudo
Got bored and skipped most of the rest.
Ubuntu is a Gnome based debian distro which is designed for desktop use and tries to avoid the whole root user thing without opening the OS up to the usual XP security issues most inexperienced users face.
Why don’t you go download a f***ing KDE-based distro and stop wasting my bandwidth? It’s not like you don’t have a choice after all!!
No, that is completly wrong! No one should ever have to search for anything or read any manual. It should be self explanatory and just work. Anything less is a bug.
Why, on earth, are manuals written then?
A) To waste space on the harddrive. After all, everyone loves bloat (check out services.msc btw).
B) To waste paper. After all, less nature is more living space.
C) To make the user feel stupid so he evades that confrontation after his or her first manual experience.
D) To make the user be able to learn something, possibly when he or she can’t do it by ‘self explanatory’ and ‘just work’ paths.
My oh my, hard question! Perhaps tossing a coin between A and B will bring us the answer? Or just picking C because it seems the most plausible? Or could the answer be D?!?!?
I have been using Linux since 1999. When I first installed Mandrake (I think version 6.2 or something) I was impressed by both: kde and Gnome. Since then I switched many times from various distros and desktops but till recently KDE and Gnome were similiar. But that’s changed! While KDE is now a kind of “generic” but well developed and stable desktop, it does poor support for hardware. It is likely that KDE team aims at wide variety of unices, not only Linux, and KDE is ideal for e.g. terminal servers or corporate desktops.
On the other hand, new versions of Gnome have significant support for automatic hardware detection and configuration. With Gnome come a lot of configuration tools similiar to those we used to have provided by commercial distros (e.g. Mandrake Control Center). What is strange (I mean I never dreamed about it), Gnome supports community-driven distros with ready to use, enterprise class desktop with significant integration with OS (I mean Linux).
I believe that in a few years we won’t see distros with both desktops any more. Gnome does too much integration with system (this was the reason why slackware dropped it).
But, what’s realy strange, both desktops are just great! I can’t do anything else but keep switching from one to another again and again. And I believe that in the near future I will be watching Linux (or *nix) getting simply better every day.
Ok, so now I’ll shut down my slackware box and go to bed (it’s quite late here in Central Europe) dreaming about perfect desktop…
“I tried Ubuntu on three PCs. It wouldn’t boot on any of them. Knoppix just worked.”
I had quite the opposite experience, I tried Knoppix on three PCs, it wouldn’t boot. Ubuntu just worked.
>
Something might work well for you, but it will never work well for everybody. A jack of all trades is good at nothing.
>
I knew I shouldn’t have been so dramatic
Just to avoid unneccesary reactions: what I had in mind is that, if it is possible to make something self-explanatory, it should be. Anything less is unacceptable, and I mean that literally.
It follows from this that a developer cannot say “go read the manual” or “search the net” unless it is not practically possible to make it self-explanatory. I think in many of the cases that are likely to pop up here, there will be eminently good solutions to make it self-explanatory if one just takes the task seriously.
Mac and Windows are both much better at this because they have clearer focus on non-technical users (note that I didn’t say they don’t have usability problems).
I like Debian, I like Gnome, so of course I don’t have a problem with Ubuntu. But it is too hyped (remember Gentoo fanboys?) and it can’t live to the highest expectations right now (without a certain amount of placebo effect).
Let’s just say that a week with Ubuntu has renewed my respect to Debian developers (they are of the highest skill, and they are a bit conservative for a reason). But Ubuntu=Debian for the people who would otherwise run Mandrake, is a worthwhile goal as well.
If you belong to the group of people that likes patching their own kernel etc, maybe you don’t belong to Ubuntu’s target group though.
if it is possible to make something self-explanatory, it should be. Anything less is unacceptable, and I mean that literally.
1) Ask yourself, ‘what makes something self-explanatory’ and apply that to the subject(s). Then post the individual examples. Use the feedback. See if Bugzilla or Mailinglists name them. If not, consider writing the developers about the issue(s). It would be much more constructive.
2) Ask yourself, do other non-GNOME and non-Ubuntu systems also come with some lecture for the user to use when he/she needs help? These systems are not going away unless everything is self-explanatory for everyone which, unfortunately for those who’d like that, has implications as well (e.g. the usual disadvantage of conservative UIs).
If you try a LiveCD on 3 different PCs and it produces the same error, how can it possibly not cross your mind that maybe the CD is bad??
I love brown and didn’t even know it. I used to settle for retina burning blue desktops, but no more. You think I’m kidding but ever since switching to Ubuntu my desktop is a plain gradient dark brown to light brown. It’s sweet and relaxing.
As to the ‘less is more’ approach to application packages, real science indicates it might be valid. I point you to the Scientific American:
http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.cfm?sequencenameCHAR=item2&metho…
Also, Mepis and Knoppix liveCDs haven’t worked for me at all ever.
Finally, the authors beef with this distro is ridiculous. He doesn’t like the color of the desktop or splashscreen?!?! I’ve never seen that listed as a positive or a negative in reviewing any other distro. Especially not when changing it is so easy. Furthermore, as was mentioned time and again, Ubuntu has a top shelf community. In my experience, it’s second only to Gentoo.
Osnews needs to raise the content bar a notch on these “reviews”, or add some kind of community rating system or something. I’m getting really tired of wasting my time on this crap.
I do agree with some of the author’s points. I too am a “KDE guy” simply because KDE seems more complete to me. GNOME looks way nicer though.
I don’t really like the brown theme in Ubuntu though. I know it can be easily changed but I think that blue should be there instead of brown. It just looks better.
I’ve tried using spatial on my Mac for a while and all the windows being left open is too annoying. Especially on a 14″ screen. I went back to column view after a day.
Ubuntu does look rather nice though. I hope people stick at it. I hate it when a new distro comes out with lots of potential but doesn’t follow through.
No distro I’ve tried has everything the way I want it, perhaps he should actually spend a few minute finding out how to adjust things to his liking then use it for a couple of weeks before writing the review.
For the record, I managed to install Ubuntu without formatting my /home partition so it is possible. I admit their partitioning tool could be a bit easier to use though.
As to the distro needing more work, they have only made one stable release, you can’t expect anyone to do things perfectly the first time around.
Don’t like (insert_distro_here)? Just make your own and give it away for free. When it’s your distro you get to choose your own colours, desktop, wm, package manager etc. You can even put your taskbar at the bottom of the screen!
Ubuntu sent me 10 pairs of CDs halfway around the world for nothing. Everytime I see the brown, I’m reminded that this distro is a little bit different in a good way.
To everybody who moans about having to download so many ISOs and it won’t boot on such’n’such, there are any number of (non-free) alternatives which would give you the right to bitch.
If you find a genuine bug. Make the effort to file a proper bug report. That way, you become part of the solution, not just another casual observer of problems.
All distros offer something. Linux users unite!
I guess by ‘a bit more work’ he means they should change it to a blue, KDE based distro that has several additional CDs of apps and defaults to a root user account. More work could also mean changing the name to Mepis or Knoppix.
I had an apple at lunch. I really wanted a pear. That apple could have used a little more work.
Just like what doogle said, Ubuntu (and Canonical) was gracious enough to send me a box of CDs to give away in a local installfest for nothing – that’s one thing that made this distro unique.
When you receive a FREE Ubuntu CD package, you get 2 discs – LiveCD and Install. This will continue even for the upcoming Hoary release. And they will ship it to you for FREE no matter where you are on this planet.
As for the DVDs not to play at all, ALL OS installs don’t have that by default UNLESS its included in the package! Some distros won’t have DVD playback by default for legal reaons. If you want legal DVD playback, buy it from Linspire or get TurboLinux 10F.
If you didn’t like brown, then install the thing and change it. It’s Debian anyway, no different from any debian based distro out there (live CDs included).
Who needs ROOT/SU when you can do the same stuff with SUDO without having the risk of trashing the whole system? SUDO is much safer btw.
“But seriously: I like the default theme of Ubuntu because it’s NOT the standard-blue-and-clouds-in-the-sky look. And if you don’t like it, change it. This isn’t OS X after all …”
Heyyyy, HEYYYY!
Hi, i used to be a kde fan until i first tried ubuntu.
yes kde is more mature and complete, that’s true, but i got to prefer gnome when it comes to look’n’feel. I’d still like to have killer apps like amarok or k3b for gnome though…
to the author: kde and gnome are *two different projects*. saying “i don’t like nautilus becasuse it’s not konqueror” is not useful, infact your “article” is pretty much useless imho
hint: try kubuntu (ubuntu kde edition). trolling is bad for the OSS community
I’m a relative Linux newbie, and I’ve played with SuSE, Fedora Core 3, and Ubuntu.
I like Ubuntu better. It’s simply a more responsive desktop system. I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t have any trouble getting my dvds, cds, mp3s, divx, xvid, and whatever other format under the sun working. Nautilus has a command line argument “–browser” and an option in preferences to make it work just like Windows Explorer or Konquerer.
Sure, you can compare the software to SuSE if you want, but the SuSE distribution is either 5 cds or a DVD, and FC3 is also a multi-cd distribution. Ubuntu gives you what you need to have a functioning desktop workstation OS. It’s designed with apt in mind so that you don’t have to download 3 gigs of information just to get the 600 megs you need.
My only real complaints about Ubuntu are the partition manager upon installation and the wierd version numbers given to some of the packages at the repositories.
I do think that the Brown Ubuntu theme is great (been using it as my sole desktop OS for about 6 months now). But their is some stuff that could be added to the brown theme. I don’t think the anwser is to go away from brown, but maybe to some small splashes of color to it (ex. the close button might turn red when mouse is hovered over it). But I do think that the brown theme in Ubuntu was a breath of fresh air, just like the Distro.
~Alan
P.S. Does anyone know a good tutoral on creating GTK+ themes?
I really like the way Gnome is going these days. But I just cannot like it’s apperance. I spend a lot of my time using OS X these days, and to go from this to drab brown just isn’t good. Of course, business types tend to think Macs are toys, which may be to do with the bright colours, I dunno. Maybe Gnome looks more “business like”. I’ve never found a Gnome theme that I like, either.
Oh yeah, and nautilus’ “spatial” behaviour that leaves a whole bunch of windows open really really sucks rocks. I haven’t found a file manager that is “ideal” yet. But I certainly have a better time of it using Mac OS X Finder and KDE’s Konqueror. Maybe they should copy Finder’s column view, that is kinda nifty.
Other than those two things, Gnome and Ubuntu seem pretty sweet. I may change to Ubuntu on my desktop after hoary comes out.
Well, I’ll give you a little credit in that you at least googled for answers to your “problems”. But, the answers for everything you had issues with is either explained in the FAQ’s or HOW-TO’s on the Ubuntu web site or on the “unofficial” user guide at:
http://ubuntuguide.org/
I’d better start by admitting that I’m a fan of KDE.
It’s not going to appeal to experienced Debian users,
They always show their hand in the opening and closing paragraphs.
This article is terrible. Don’t even bother reading it if you have not already. The author has put forth absolutely zero effort obtaining his desired result.
*DVD and MP3 playback are both easily obtainable and you need go no further than the Ubuntu Wiki for the info.
*As others have said you can easily set a root password.
*Also, the placement of menus is a GNOME design decision, not an Ubuntu design.
*You can change the placement of the panels and what menus and applets are available on your panels.
*As to the aesthetics of the Ubuntu theme, please read the Ubuntu Web site.
*Spatial Nautilus is a topic that has been discussed ad nauseam since the advent of GNOME 2.8. Google for one of the countless sites that tells you how you can turn off spatial view.
By the way, if you don’t like GNOME, then please apt-get KDE.
“I had an apple at lunch. I really wanted a pear. That apple could have used a little more work.”
classic.
KDE fan “trying” to like Gnome and Ubuntu? C’mon, at least be fair in your review. You’re not here to grade Gnome, but Ubuntu.
Oh yeah, and nautilus’ “spatial” behaviour that leaves a whole bunch of windows open really really sucks rocks.
It’s possible to navigate spatially and not leave window droppings everywhere. It’s also possible to disable nautilus’ spatial behaviour.
What really sucks is this demonstrated lack of reading ability combined with a tendency to demand instant results without requiring any effort.
And a bunch of you are bitching about the brown? Jesus wept… Why don’t you just tattoo “my technical opinion is worthless” on your foreheads and save us all the hassle? Yes, I do realise that the initial appearance of an app plays a part in its acceptance… I just question the validity of wanting it to look like Every Other Linux Distro simply because changing the background is such a crippling operation for some.
Ah,
Where should I start. I’ve been using Debian on servers for years, so I have pretty good picture about how it works. On the other hand, I’ve been using Red Hat (and these days Fedora) on the desktops since 5.2. or something.
Last weekend I had a dream about creating FOSS DTP environment. Since now it’s satisfactory even technically by running native programs like sodipodi, gimp and scribus. Anyways, I thought by using ubuntu I could draw the line between my experiences with GNU/Linux servers and desktops, taking the best of both.
My dream didn’t come true.
First of all, Ubuntu fucked up my MBR. Something that has never happened to me before. And when I say fucked up – I mean that literally, I got an error saying something like “No operating system available”, when I tried to boot.
Well, after I fixed that (and missed The Other Operating System on desktop), started the dpkg rumba. It went as usual, no biggie. Besides not being able to find a mirror near me. But when I booted it first time to configure all the packages and everything, it just simply – didn’t work.
It wasn’t the root account or anything like that. Something else, which I can’t put my finger on. No wait, yes I can. My Palm didn’t work, sound didn’t work (SB Live!) and so forth. And on the top of everything else – it looked horrible. VAX VMS looked fine being beige, but brown – gimme a break.
Damn, I’m in a hurry so I’ll just tie up everything by saying, Ubuntu (human) is not the kind of person I would like to meet again.
this article seems to be the opposite of what i wrote some weeks ago (a small mepis review called “gnome guy goes kde”). and sorry to say that, but, erm… mine was better researched. the author should have tried a lot harder to solve the problems (the ubuntuguide has been mentioned…). as it is, it really doesn’t make too much sense… 🙁
regards,
christian
It shows clearly that a distro that is only a debian with a gnome theme needs only 30 minutes to be reviewed. At least is on a par with other 30 minutes superhyping reviews. But people complains only on this one I ask myself why…
Not a big distro hopper. Gave the Live CD for Ubuntu Live a try and it detected my Netgear usually only live after I compile my madwifi driver pcmcia card but I did not have my WEP passcode at hand so no in depth testing. Off the live CD I got no output for the battery monitor.
Impressed with the simple look and feel and after I did the research that obviously this writer did not I was pretty impressed with the level of software available. Including gnome-photo-printer which I had to run an rpmbuild and make an rpm for myself in Fedora Core 3. I have used Suse but being a big gnome fan and being disgusted with all the behind the scenes stuff SuseConfig did I tried RH8 and stuck through with it up to FC3.
There are just a couple of things that annoys me about RH and I am ready to give another distro a try. But on my main home box I am not making the move until I have played around with Ubuntu for awhile.
My wife likes the Fedora desktop and I would want to be ready for any fussing and minor quips and issues before I make the move.
Try it, it’s nice: http://livecd.gnustep.org
could do with a bit more work
So the reviewer went off down that tired old path of DVD playback, but apart from that and various subjective remarks, I thought it was quite a reasonable summary of the state of Ubuntu. If the apologists would actually get off their high horses (calling the reviewer a troll pretty much marks you out as an apologist given the fairness of many of the observations) and actually channel that energy into fixing the various broken parts of the Debian/GNOME/Ubuntu experience, perhaps they wouldn’t need to spend their time defending the cause in online forums.
Oh, and Canonical did kindly send me some CDs and I’d gladly contribute to the effort given a bit more time, but as a distro to do actual work on (as opposed to one to hack on) I don’t see it replacing my aging Red Hat install no matter how much I’d like it to. And as for comparisons with Knoppix, I was shocked to see that 128MB RAM is really not enough (unless you want to spend 20 minutes waiting for it to boot into a very slow desktop) – so much for the chances of third-world uptake with those kinds of minimum requirements.
..is just a “sudo -s” away.
totally worthless article, why do these things get published ?
“Why are there only KDE folks writing about Ubuntu? ”
Because the Gnome folks are enjoying Ubuntu and having fun with it while the above mentioned are writing .
P.S. That’s said being a KDE guy .
im suprised someone could regularily visit osnews and NOT know about spatial nautilus. and what exactly is so hard about apt-get install libdvdcss2? it would be trivial to find in synaptic, and even easier found with a bit of googling.
either this guy is a moron or a glorified troll. either way, its not an honest review.
By Guerkan (IP: —.ethz.ch) – Posted on 2005-02-23 08:12:32
Try it, it’s nice: