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1 • OpenSSH (by ac on 2009-11-09 10:01:05 GMT from Hungary)
Donating to OpenSSH was a good decision. That's definitely a software we all use.
2 • DWW328+ (by D1Knight on 2009-11-09 10:19:00 GMT from United States)
I thank you another great DWW. This weeks was very enjoyable. Jesse, that was a excellent and fair review of Mandriva 2010.0, thanks.
I appreciate the heads up/warning about the puppy.org site. That is too bad, whether you like puppy or not, no one deserves that. Bulldogs? At first I thought it was a joke, yeah indeed who let the dogs out.
I am for sure looking forward to Fedora's next release. I totally agree with Adam Williamson, if a delay is needed to improve the release, so be it.
Donations, I vote for next time it be Parted Magic. I like them, IMHO one of the better mini distros going.
3 • Pool Resources Together for World Beater Distro (by feral on 2009-11-09 10:41:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
It does seem a bit pointless to me, in small groups of people doing their own thing when it comes to distros and Linux.
Isn't it time we pooled our resources to make just one great world beating distro. There is after all just the one windows and just the one apple. Why are we so fragmented in our approach to producing just the one Linux distro?
There are 100 distros listed at DistroWatch, there must be a lot more that aren't listed. With all that talent out there you would think that if we all pulled together we could make one hell of a world beater.
But it will never happen. Choice you say? Too much Choice you mean. Confusion. Conflict. etc etc
4 • Real-Time Kernel (by Béranger on 2009-11-09 10:54:38 GMT from Romania)
Thank you for the answer, Jesse, but I thought that real-time kernel equates responsiveness, which would also imply that ALL of the desktop applications would be MORE RESPONSIVE with a Real-Time Kernel system!
You know, a bit like the stuff in Windows where one can opt between "Optimize for desktop applications" vs. "Optimize for background services".
5 • @post3 (by Sean on 2009-11-09 10:56:46 GMT from United States)
Yeah. Right. And too many types of cars, there should be only one; a "world beater car."
Same goes for clothes. Just one set for everybody; a "world beater suit."
Furniture, too. One for all; "world beater furniture."
Bicycles. Toothpaste. Sandwiches. Cell phones. Shoes. Refrigerators.
Etc.
6 • Mandriva (by spig on 2009-11-09 11:17:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
Tried M-One 2010 as a liveCD. Waste of time. Anyone wanting to run this on regular hardware should take a week's holiday while waiting for it to boot up. These guys really don't get it. Most folks do NOT have the latest deca-core machine with 50Gb memory; still quite a few P I s out there! A liveCD should not be this way. Otherwise, it looks quite decent and may be OK as an installed distro. Sadly, couldn't spend any more time waiting for apps to load on my 754. Perhaps the Xfce CE group will see the error of the ways of the main developers and make a lightweight desktop run lightly on lighter kit?
7 • ubuntu kraptastic karmic (by Rip Van Winkle on 2009-11-09 11:17:37 GMT from United States)
hmm, maybe if canonical would slow down a little and release a little less often it would give them more time to debug and pay more attention to detail, maybe a release once a year and NOT every 6 months, most other distros that do not have the bug problems that ubuntu has publishes a new release version once a year and it seems to work great for them.
8 • OpenSSH <3 (by Andre on 2009-11-09 11:29:48 GMT from Norway)
Good to see OpenSSH getting some love. If only a couple of major hardware vendors could follow suit :o)
9 • Ubuntu's declining quality (by wayne on 2009-11-09 11:29:55 GMT from United States)
Ever since 7.04 I think Ubuntu has been on a steady decline. The last release that worked perfectly on my hardware (which has not changed) was 5.04. Due to the end of life cycle I was eventually forced to change. Having upgraded to 7.04 and having some things no longer work correctly, mostly video and network related, that worked in the 5.04 I went looking elsewhere. Having been on Debian since my short experience with the 7 series I have not tried any 8.x releases. Now with 9.04 and still having the same exact hardware as I did with 5.04, now I get ok video and good network but at a loss of mouse functionality and random logout's. With all of the reports but not having had the time to do an install on a spare partition, I would believe them.
10 • ubuntu (by Dominique Eckert on 2009-11-09 11:30:30 GMT from Italy)
Well, as an old Ubuntu user (I started using it as my main OS starting from version 5.04) I must say that like many people I'm very disappointed with Karmic Koala. It's the only time, except for 6.10 "Edgy Eft" which was a disaster, that I'm so disappointed with an Ubuntu release. I've found Karmic to be unstable, unpredictable, and full of known bugs which should have been fixed long ago (e.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/446146).
I really hope that Karmic was just a mistake somewhere down the road and that the next LTS will be as good as 8.04, otherwise I will definitely switch to another distro.
11 • Re: Post 3 (by Travis B on 2009-11-09 11:32:22 GMT from United States)
Because I don't like Ubuntu.
If you want to conform to one distro, that'd end up being what everyone choose to conform to. And I CERTAINLY don't want people to attempt to conform to my Gentoo.
Linux isn't a company, by the way. If people don't like where a GNU/Linux distribution is going, they're free to fork it and change it for their needs.
Of course, we still have the 'I CHANGED THE WALLPAPER ON UBUNTU. NEWWWWWWW DISTRO!'
I'm fine with having "legitimately different distributions" existing, I think it lets everyone have the flavor they want.
12 • re: ubuntu kraptastic karmic (by Andre on 2009-11-09 11:36:03 GMT from Norway)
@7: I don't think the 6 month cycle is the problem. OpenBSD has been releasing every 6 months like clockwork (may and november) for years and years now, and I don't remember them having any problems like this. See http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/16/2322203/Why-OpenBSDs-Release-Process-Works
13 • ubuntu (by Rajesh G on 2009-11-09 11:42:22 GMT from India)
I made a fresh install, after formatting the disk drives with ext4 because I read somewhere that upgrading filesystem from ext3 to ext4 does not confer same benefits. We do have 5 systems (of course, networked) in my SOHO.
So far, no hitches. Everything works great (except my MS VX-1000 webcam) - printing, file transfer, etc.
To me, koala is really great! Thanks developers (all linux developers, especially ubuntu)
14 • No subject (by Angel Arce J on 2009-11-09 11:45:25 GMT from Belgium)
Well, "feral" there are actually much more than 100 Distros listed in Distrowatch. I know well, since it was me who proposed, about 2 years ago, here in the comments, to put a link, or another page, or something, with the rankings of all the rest of the Distros to Ladislav. It was to give more opportunities to the small Distros. And happily he did... (smart guy :D )
Just click the hyperlink below the 100th Distro called "More statistics..." and you will find the rest of the Distros listed.
Anyway, your "Pool Resources Together for World Beater Distro" sounds right in theory, or morally, but knowing the world of computing, and more specifically the Free/Open Source computing, the competition, the evolution.. that is not going to happen, honestly
Everybody in the world wearing the same underwear would more likely to happen than a unique Linux Distro for all...
Besides so many Distros, GUIs, Applications is not that bad... it encourages Free/Open Source Darwinism: " The survival of the Freest"... ;)
Angel A
15 • RE: 12 • re: ubuntu kraptastic karmic (by Béranger on 2009-11-09 11:46:44 GMT from Romania)
@7: I don't think the 6 month cycle is the problem. OpenBSD has been releasing every 6 months like clockwork
It IS the problem. OpenBSD does not include gazillions of packages that have to be maintained for 18 months, eh? They only include a limited set of packages, whereas Ubuntu...
The 6-mo release cycle is a problem because of the complexity of a fully-fledged desktop & server & kitchen-sink distro such as Ubuntu (and Mandriva, and Fedora), not per se.
But in this case, it is a root problem IMNSHO.
16 • Ubuntu (by geneven on 2009-11-09 11:53:37 GMT from United States)
The new version of Ubuntu is working splendidly for me. I couldn't do an actual upgrade from the previous version -- no prob, go to fresh install!
I also installed eeebuntu this week on my Asus eee 1000h. As usual, wireless was the first concern. I had to change my WPA2 secuurity to a simpler settiing and then all was well.
I had brief flings with Slitaz (wow, looks impressive) and Antix (I want to use it with SMXI) and gave up on both temporarily over the wirelesss issue.
17 • Ubuntu 9010 (by John Jones on 2009-11-09 11:56:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
I upgraded my 'spare' Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.1 & afterwards I could no longer boot unto the KDE desktop (I had Gnome and KDE desktops installed), and I no longer have sound.
I'm very glad I didn't upgrade my main Ubuntu without trying it out on the spare first.
18 • karmic (by guerreau on 2009-11-09 12:02:28 GMT from Germany)
j'ai installé karmic sur mon netbook sans la moindre difficulté, tout est reconnu, je n'ai pas trouvé une seule bogue. je trouve dommage que, parmi les utilisateurs de logiciels libres, il s'en trouve autant pour regretter indéfiniment le "bon vieux temps"... merci à tous les contributeurs d'ubuntu !
19 • power Mandriva (by n0n on 2009-11-09 12:06:38 GMT from Spain)
I am very happy with Mandriva.
the MCC (control Panel) is the most beatyfull in tbhe Linux admin, only YaST is similar.
God save Mandriva!
;)
20 • udevd failure on Mandriva 2010 (by zygmunt on 2009-11-09 12:08:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
Maybe this may be of general interest with udevd failure!! Anyone see this??
Both 32 &64 bit Mandriva Free installed with ease. Using KDE4 on first boot udevd 'hung' at status x0100. Motherboard was ECS RS485M-M. Tried installing GNOME and setting noacpi as kernel boot parameter. All was fine. Switching boot to KDE4, the first problem was back. Could not find a way to get back to GNOME. /etc/sysconfig/desktop did not work for me. Presently have dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/partion bs=1M to zero the partition. Could this be a mixed PATA/SATA problem? I have one of each and mandriva 2001 was on a sata partition. SATA and PATA disks have priority SATA before PATA in Mandriva 2010. But I have allowed for that in the boot chain. A second machine (K8V-MX mobo) with 2 PATA disks worked with GNOME. KDE4 login just looped around, failing each time. Seems Mandriva is a poor on my particular motherboards. No problems with any other distros!!
21 • Karmic Koala (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 12:10:10 GMT from Australia)
I am not interested in the politcs or debates behind the various Linux distributions, but I did want to say that I am not one of those suffering from the apparent bugs in the recent release of Ubuntu Karmic Koala. I have been using Kubuntu since at least its Dapper Drake release back in 2006 and the upgrade from Jaunty to Karmic has been the smoothest I have ever experienced. I upgraded five installations of Kubuntu Jaunty 32-bit and made one fresh installation of Kubuntu Karmic 64-bit, all without any hassle or failure. Maybe I've just been lucky, I wouldn't know. All I know is that it works for me just fine.
22 • Mandriva 2010 Gnome (by Stephen on 2009-11-09 12:15:26 GMT from United States)
The documentation of the Live-CD is for their 2009 version, not the 2010. Regarding the guest account; I added one other user, so when I removed the quest account, it removed everyone from the login screen. I am very surprised this login screen looks as bad as it does. It's completely outdated.
23 • @3 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 12:17:20 GMT from United States)
FOSS advocates do not like ideas that would benefit them in the long term, plus Red Hat will not give up their form of vendor lock-in to allow any form of standardization beyond the LSB as almost all commercial software for the platform is built against Red Hat 4, a nice form of vendor lock-in.
In short: the one distro to rule them all will never see the light of day outside of Mount Doom.
24 • Karmic & Mandriva (by Patrick on 2009-11-09 12:20:53 GMT from Ireland)
Well, after five great years of using Ubuntu with no problems whatsover, Karmic also burned me. That 3g usb modem bug, 446146, is an utter disgrace - it was introduced late in the cycle by a kernel change but was still quickly reported, with lots of comments on how important it was that it be fixed, and yet had nothing done about it.
What's more important, sticking rigidly to a release schedule or the end-users ? I could ask where's the 'humanity' in that :-) Severely disappointed. Is Ubuntu now just another company talking the talk and not walking the walk ?
On a plus note, I have installed Mandriva 2010 KDE instead (Mandrake was my intro to Linux a long time ago) and it's a beauty. I'm not sure yet that I'm getting the same battery life as Ubuntu 9.04, and the graphical s/w installer doesn't seem to be anywhere near as good at resolving dependencies as urpmi, nor as fast, but thats not a killer.
Also the RC2 live cd candidate detected my 3g modem, but the installation thought it was unrequired h/w which I never noticed so I had to install a second time, but the full release may have sorted this ?
Overall though I'm well impressed and will be keeping it for the forseeable future.
25 • Ubuntu works for me (by Azrael on 2009-11-09 12:21:26 GMT from United States)
For all these stories saying about failed Ubuntu 9.10 upgrades I can only give the usual sysadmin's standard answer #1: strange, it works for me.
Also see http://laserjock.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/the-myth-of-the-bad-ubuntu-release/
26 • Karmic (by box on 2009-11-09 12:31:01 GMT from Slovenia)
My only problem with Karmic was a newer nvidia driver, which btw also doesn't work in MS windows. After turning off powermizer, Karmic works like a charm, speedy and very responsive. Should ubuntu turn it off by default (not good for laptops) or should we make presure on nvidia to provide a stable driver instead of adding new functionality.
27 • No problems here. (by FreeDisk on 2009-11-09 12:41:41 GMT from Netherlands)
Just out of experience... Ubuntu 9.10 worked fine on all the different computers and laptops I installed it on (9). Really... it just works. Previous releases, that didn't get WiFi on my Acer netbook, now worked out of the box. And I really love the 'Format' function they added for USB drives.
28 • Fedora 12 Release Candidates (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 12:42:01 GMT from United States)
Here is a link to the F12 RC's if anyone want's to try them.
http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/
29 • Karmic and Mandriva (by rich on 2009-11-09 12:54:15 GMT from United States)
Installed Karmic on 3 computers and removed it from (2 of them) a laptop (it worked fairly well there) and on a 64-bit machine where I had problems. I've install Mandriva Gnome 2010 on the laptop (works very well) and KDE on a 32-bit machine. I'm waiting for Fedora 12 for the 64-bit machine. Karmic is also on a 4th computer and works fine there. (i.e. 3 desktops and 1 laptop.) Both Karmic and Mandriva have some bugs but offered nothing that couldn't be worked with or around. I'm imressed despite some of the reported problems. Fedora hopefully will be excellent. Overall I'm not upset by the quick development of all of these packages. They still keep moving forward with the goal in mind to become more stable and up to date with time They are all 'top' contenders. . . .
Rich
30 • What is the best distribution for netbooks? (by tdiers on 2009-11-09 12:58:53 GMT from Japan)
I just installed Mandriva 2010 One KDE on my HP Mini 311-1000NR. The disk loaded up fast, don't know what the complainer is using for hardware, but it loads good on a netbook. So far I haven't had any issues with anything. Looks like all of my hardware works "out of the box". My camera and mic even work with Skype. This is the cleanest Mandriva has been for quite a while. (I've been using Mandriva (Mandrake) since 5.2). I have also loaded the Free DVD x86 KDE version on my HP HDX18-1180US with no issues so far either.
31 • ubuntu 9.10 (by jdetras on 2009-11-09 12:59:07 GMT from Philippines)
I just had a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10. And it works fine with my HP2140. No upgrades from previous release for me since I am always tweaking and installing things that might conflict with the new release. Everything works fine. :) see more of my comments on Ubuntu 9.10 at http://practicalswitchtoubuntu.blogspot.com/2009/11/finally-installed-ubuntu-910.html. Thanks
32 • Kubuntu Karmic is working great here (by Leo on 2009-11-09 13:05:55 GMT from United States)
Karmic is by far the best Kubuntu release since KDE4 was first released, hands down. I upgraded my 3 home computers (1 desktop and 2 netbooks) with no issues. Actually, just visit kubuntuforums.net to see more reactions, it's been a fantastic release, at least for Kubuntu.
I am not sure what is all the disastrous media coverage reported here, would the DWW please backup this negative claims with actual evidence?
Any time you have a release of the most popular OS in the planet after Windows some people will have issues, the question is in what proportions ...
33 • Mandriva 2010 (by jdetras on 2009-11-09 13:07:11 GMT from Philippines)
I wanted to try Mandriva 2010 so I downloaded the Mandriva 2010 One KDE. I used a Live USB to boot into my office desktop. BUT both failed for me. In the netbook, it did boot up and showed a horizontal bar at the bottom but until that only. For the desktop, I liked the rolling circle but it took almost half hour of waiting to boot and I gave up. Even just at boot, it failed as compared to a several seconds booting Ubuntu 9.10. The experience is just for me and maybe an isolated case. I just wanted to share it here.
34 • Mandriva 2010 (by tdiers on 2009-11-09 13:16:43 GMT from Japan)
The only issue I've had with Mandriva 2010, and was having troubles loading or installing, was because of a bad image or burn. Seems to be sensitive to fast burning. I re-downloaded and burned at the slowest speed available and then everything worked fine.
Made a mistake in my previous post, I actually installed the x86_64 version on my HDX laptop.
35 • Ubuntu and Debian testing (by Xtyn on 2009-11-09 13:17:33 GMT from Romania)
Ubuntu 9.10 works fine for me, although I don't find it as spectacular as 9.04.
The most interesting thing (for me) is that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will be based on Debian testing, which is great. They couldn't pull it together with Debian unstable because Canonical will commit resources to Debian for the December freeze.
I've been using Debian testing for some time and it's really stable. In December, Debian testing will freeze and the bugs will get solved by both Ubuntu and Debian developers, which is a great cooperation.
I think Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will have close to 0 bugs but it will probably be a bit outdated, as right now Debian testing is using the 2.6.30 kernel (just an example).
36 • @23 (by Pinky on 2009-11-09 13:25:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
"FOSS advocates do not like ideas that would benefit them in the long term"
Care to provide an example of how reducing the distro count would be of any long-term benefit? The whole argument of "too many distros" has been covered so many times, but I have never had anyone successfully provide a GENUINE benefit from the "one distro" concept.
For the record, I agree wholeheartedly with Sean (#5) - I tend to use the car analogy myself, but I will be using your list in future discussions!
37 • Donation for SystemRescueCd (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 13:26:38 GMT from Canada)
SystemRescueCd would be a good candidate for the next donation as it saved a lot of us from trouble !
38 • About Moblin (by moycano on 2009-11-09 13:27:32 GMT from Mexico)
Which version are reviewing the guys form ComputerWorld? They say "the biggest issue with Moblin right now is its Web browser, which gets bogged down rendering JavaScript-heavy" but since 2.1 is just a custom edition of Firefox... so, Firefox can't handle right the javascript!?
39 • Saving developer power by distro independent packages (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 13:28:37 GMT from Finland)
@3
Yes, stabilizing each software package separately for each version of each distro is waste of developer power. But there is an alternative to pooling all developer resources to "one world beater distro". As there exist distro independent package formats, distributions do not necessarily need a large number of packages of their own. I wish more developers gained interest in producing distribution independent software. There exist several different package formats for that e.g. Zero Install.
Link to Zero Install homepage: http://0install.net/
40 • Kubuntu (by JD. at 2009-11-09 13:34:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Performed an on-line upgrade with no hitches. The only change I needed to make after a re-boot was to allow the new Network Manager access to the wallet.
Unlike some, I'm definitely feeling the koala's karma!
41 • No Ubuntu Problems (by Eddie Wilson on 2009-11-09 13:34:58 GMT from United States)
Using The Register is kind of grabbing for straws as far a good info goes. That's like getting the latest world news from the National Enquirer. Anyway I'm sure that some people has had some real problems with the latest Ubuntu but I don't believe most of the FUD that is being spread around by the Ubuntu haters.(MS fans, Apple fans, Linux and BSD geeks who feel their world threatened by normal people, etc.) People can throw all the bad press they want to and I'm sorry to say that it's just hearsay. People need to try things for them self's. I don't trust reviews or peoples experiences because some people can't be trusted when it comes to experiences with different distros. I would say that a lot of problems were self inflected and just pushed off as a bed distro. while thousands of us had no problems to speak of. Condemnation of distros by people is more or less a load of crap. Earlier someone said not to waste time with trying out the new Madriva 2010. It was not any good because of the problems they had. I don't believe that at all. I had a problem with OpenSuse 11.2, I believe it was a release candidate, borking one of my hard drives. That doesn't mean it's not any good. It only means I had problems one time. You need to try it for yourself. Why do web sites foster this kind of attitude with people. I believe it's not so much for info. as it is for site hits. Open source supporters and Linux supporters say they love the foss world because of the community. What I see more and more from the community is a back stabbing, It's your fault, I'm the best and you are the worst, arrogant attitude. Microsoft and Apple don't have anything to worry about from us. Our biggest enemy is ourself. Oh by the way, I've had no problems with Ubuntu 9.10
42 • Mandriva and "Smart Desktop" (nepomuk project) (by I4U on 2009-11-09 13:38:51 GMT from France)
Well done with the Mandriva review. It correspond to my own impressions and appreciation. Except on the "Smart Desktop". I was expecting from a long time such a smart approach.
This system wide function is just at his beginning but it's a user centric, and in future a community centric way to organize files and information. Another fine aspect: you can aggregate informations and files to a project... and you can add subproject.
An excellent description here: http://doc4.mandriva.org/bin/view/labs/Nepomuk-mdv2010-RC.
On my opinion, one of the most interesting on the Linux desktop from a long time.
43 • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Kernel (by AmblestonDack on 2009-11-09 13:55:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
@35 - Lucid is currently using 2.6.32 as its kernel, so I don't think it will be 100% pure Debian testing.
Currently using Karmic 64bit and I must say that I am 100% pleased with this release and so far no show stoppers for me.
44 • Upgrading Karmic Koala (by Al on 2009-11-09 13:59:30 GMT from United States)
Add me to the group who had no problem updating to Karmic Koala. As usual, the few who had a problem are going to make a big stink while the people who aren't having a problem are just going on quietly with their lives.
Great free software. Really amazing what they've done.
45 • Ubuntu Karmic - just OK (by Jan E on 2009-11-09 14:14:27 GMT from Netherlands)
Last week I did 3 installs with the brandnew Ubuntu 9.10. The first was on an Asus EEE900, on which I installed UNR 9.10. Works like a charm!
Second was on my "play" laptop, a Fujitsu Siemens with an Atheros Wifi chip and Sis Mirage 3 Videochip. As usuall with Ubuntu (and it's devirates) I had little problems with the videochip. But telling the system to use VESA drivers was enough to make it als run like a charm.
The last install was on my main laptop. It´s a desktop-replace HP Compaq on which always every Linux runs perferctly. And so did Ubuntu 9.10. The first few daysI had a few queeks, but after the latest updates everything is okay now.
To users, I would suggest to do fresh installs. It's a bit more work than doing an upgrade, but there is no change of old rubbish causing failures.
46 • Ubuntu? (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 14:16:21 GMT from Italy)
I never was an Ubuntu lover, but till now I had tried every Ubuntu release.
After reading in so many places that 9.10 RC was such a "dangerous" mess, I decided to give it a miss.
In any case Ubuntu had never been stable or reliable on all my computers
(about 7), so I wasn't surprised at all.
47 • Comments (by Jesse on 2009-11-09 14:23:11 GMT from Anonymous Proxy)
Thanks to the people who left feedback on the Mandriva review. It's been a fun system to play with so far and I plan to keep it around for a while.
@Beranger: My understanding of Real-time scheduling is that it is less concerned with over-all performance as it is with precise timing. As for the Windows scheduler, I can't say for certain, but I don't think desktop versions of Windows have real-time scheduling. Rather, I think the "optimize for desktop applications" option you mentioned simply raises the priority of desktop tasks.
Perhaps someone here on the forum who has more experience with kernel scheduling can enlighten us further.
48 • Ubuntu 9.10 New Grub? (by michael King on 2009-11-09 14:23:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have had a bit of trouble with the Grub bootloader on two systems upgrading, At some point at the end of the upgrade I was presented with a choice regarding grub, the first time I didn't know about it, the second time I should have known better, I was left with a non booting system, One was fixed from the Live CD, the other I am still trying to get my head around after upgrading to Grub 2...I am so in the habit of making the simple adjustments to the menu.lst file in Grub...and now..
Its annoying as I have family mermbers using it who I have to warn against upgrading until I think its safe...Its like Ubuntu 6.06 all over again!!
I expect Fedora to be a real testing ground, bleeding edge, but not Ubuntu.
This aside, My system once I could access it was fine, no problems......
49 • Real Time Kernel and Karmic (by Michael Raugh on 2009-11-09 14:23:48 GMT from United States)
@Beranger (#4): The real-time kernel achieves responsiveness for the foreground application by deliberately favoring it over background apps, as Jesse explained. You can't do that for every app because ultimately you only have X amount of time to distribute among the apps. If somebody is getting extra time, somebody else has to be getting less. The difference isn't enough for most people to care about, but some applications are so time-sensitive that it's worth short-changing the background tasks to keep the foreground one moving as fast as possible. Yes, Windows has a setting for that, but the difference is far less than the different a Linux user gets by switching to a real-time kernel.
I told my Karmic hard-luck story last week. It wasn't a disaster; just an inconvenient choice by the installer. I've since upgraded a work laptop from Jaunty to Karmic and that went smoothly (Intel video and wireless). Gonna hold off another few weeks before I do the home laptop.
BTW, if anyone else out there is using VMware workstation, don't upgrade your distro just yet. VMware has issues with kernels above 2.6.29. A patch is probably coming but it's not here yet. Or you could use this opportunity to check out KVM, VirtualBox, or Xen. ;^)
-mr
50 • Yup (by Nobody Important on 2009-11-09 14:27:55 GMT from United States)
@43: Ubuntu 9.10 uses 2.6.31.
I never had a single issue in Karmic. Been running it since Beta without a hitch.
51 • Ubuntu Karmic. Locked up would not finish disk check on reboot. (by jjthomas on 2009-11-09 14:32:48 GMT from United States)
The install went fine. I was compiling a program while browsing with Firefox. The system froze. I rebooted and it just got stuck checking the root drive. I reinstalled without encryption and again it just hung up and on reboot it would never finish the disk check. Computer is a laptop Presario dual core.P-4.
52 • Ubuntu bashers (by Johnny Bench on 2009-11-09 14:40:35 GMT from United States)
The Ubuntu bashers are in the minority! If all the koala users would voice their views you would see an entirely different point of view.
Karmic runs perfectly on my system. So you see its not Ubuntu's fault if you have the wrong hardware. Blame ATI, nVidia, sound card your using.
Distrowatch was blame for supporting Ubuntu last week, so this week they want to appear to be neutral. Sad to see this line of approach.
53 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Eric on 2009-11-09 14:50:33 GMT from United States)
I have an older HP Pavilion with troublesome hardware, notably an ATI xpress 200 video card among other stuff.
I tried Mandriva 2010 on it, and while it seemed to install ok, I was unable to successfully boot into a working desktop environment or even just a console afterwards.
Opensuse 11.2 RC1 also had trouble on this machine, crashed during the first boot, and afterwards would only boot into init 3, though I could start KDE fine with startx from the console.
With both of these, I assumed the new default KMS for ATI might be to blame. My main distro is Arch Linux and I am a relatively competent user, but was unable to figure out the problem.
But Ubuntu 9.10 installed and worked perfectly out of the box, with Kernel Mode Setting, desktop effects worked great. All in all, I was pretty impressed.
54 • Ubuntu from Debian Testing - Great news! (by Ene Dene on 2009-11-09 14:52:33 GMT from Croatia)
This is really great news! Ubuntu is my favorite distro because I have no problems with installing restricted drivers and software, has most software available and it's becoming recognized in world outside Linux (almost everyone has heard about it).
But the stability is unfortunately a big problem, that's why for important work I have a virtual Debian machine on my server and when I want to show my non Linux friend how Ubuntu is great I usually end up "hmm... I don't understand, this shouldn't have happened...".
I think that they should be even more conservative, Debian testing for ordinary releases and Debian Stable for LTS releases. Nevertheless this is a big step forward. One of key potential advantages of Linux over Windows is it's stability, that's why we need Ubuntu to be stable. As for guys that like living on the edge, they will use distributions that has such purpose, like Fedora... and everyone will be happy.
55 • Switched from Ubuntu to Mandriva + KDE (by A. T. Novak on 2009-11-09 15:12:15 GMT from Slovenia)
After having lots of problems with latest version of Ubuntu 9.10 I decided to try another distribution. And since Mandriva 2010 just came out at the right time I gave it a try, and this time with the KDE desktop instead (I've been looking at gorgeous screenshots of KDE with lust for some quite time now). And boy was I positively surprised with Mandriva 2010. All worked great right from the installation And I absolutely fell in love with Mandriva Control Center for setting up the system. There's nothing like this in other distributions I've tried so far. KDE is also one generation ahead of GNOME as far as I've seen. Not only when it comes to the great looks but also when it comes to new technology (I love file tagging/commenting support and semantic desktop features). If all continues to go so well with Mandriva 2010 and and KDE in the next days I am a convert for sure. Great job Mandriva and KDE teams!
56 • @ 52 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 15:13:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
Love it or hate it, there seems to be no happy medium - or objectivity
The fact that it works perfectly on your system doesn't mean it's the only Linux that can do that, which is how your 'fanboi' type reply reads to me.
it's OK, but not great IMO and Distrowatch *should* have their hand slapped for reverting back to reporting every variant as a separate entry - it's virtually spamming
... and Distrowatch should be neutral all the time, so it's not sad at all
57 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Udo on 2009-11-09 15:19:09 GMT from Virgin Islands, U.S.)
All previous versions of Ubuntu have installed flawlessly on my older Toshiba Satellite laptop with an Intel chipset , but I had to give up on version 9.10.
I've tried to install multiple time with different file system and installation procedures, - always with the same result:
The installation got stuck at different points during the installation process.
However, when installing UBUNTU 9.10 on a newer desktop it installed well under virtualbox.
Maybe a release every 6 months is too frequent as the complexity of the O/S increases and it is probably hell for the programmers having to come with a new version this frequently.
My preference would be a well tested O/S ready for installation.
Remember: Haste makes waste ....... ;-)
58 • Karmic Koala upgrade (by Jack on 2009-11-09 15:32:49 GMT from United States)
Upgraded my 2 AMD homebrew computers 64 bit 9.04 to 64 bit Ubuntu 9.10 the day after it came out. No obvious issues for me. Tried many other distros, but I keep coming back to Ubuntu. Arch was definitely interesting (and fast) and may go back to it one day when I am less lazy.
59 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 15:33:19 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu 9.10 definitely felt lackluster compared to previous releases. Karmic is Ubuntu's version of Windows ME.
60 • Mandriva 2010 - How is Gnome (by Octathlon on 2009-11-09 15:33:22 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the Mandriva review. My question is: How well does the Gnome version work compared to the KDE version? Is the Control Center just as great? Is it less "heavy" compared to KDE 4?
I also wish Ubuntu would slow down and focus more on reliability. Looks like they've done a nice job improving the "user experience" though, lots of nice touches.
61 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Tony on 2009-11-09 15:33:31 GMT from United States)
My experience with Ubuntu 9.10 was great. The install seemed to take longer than normal, and I installed from scratch which means the drive was over written and all data was destroyed (I back up my data). So, far I haven't had ANY issues and my experience is all positive.
62 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 15:39:56 GMT from Portugal)
Like said in #20, unfortunately I could not install Mandriva, although I too don't use to have problems with other distros.
About Ubuntu, I also had a problem with the 3g usb modem. This bug could and should have been avoided. Anyway there is an easy workaround and In my opinion the actual Ubuntu's negative press is more due to a noisy vocal minority than to real unsolvable problems.
A great distro is mentioned In the unannounced releases. It's name is Paldo.
Although (undeserved) unknown and simple, it is a well done distro, very stable, up-to-date, and fast, witch is worthy a try.
63 • No subject (by NGCH on 2009-11-09 15:40:47 GMT from Singapore)
I've been using Ubuntu on and off over the last few years, and while I've bemoaned some rather poor quality releases in the past, I think 9.10 is quite splendid. On my laptop at least. Maybe others aren't so lucky.
Honestly speaking, while I don't like bugs myself (especially this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/469820), bugs are parts and parcels of software. It's a given in new OSes. Remember, Windows and OS X also gained plenty of bugs in the past whenever they had major revisions (XP was once a mess too, remember?). This is why I'm recommending my Windows user friends to wait, say, 6 months to a year before upgrading to Windows 7; you'll get less headache that way.
And also, upgrading without a reformat is inviting problems. I've long given up the practice of upgrading and do clean reinstalls instead. Windows 7 also recommends upgraders to do a clean install btw. That's a hint.
There's obviously still much room for Ubuntu to improve, especially in quality, but otherwise, I give Karmic Koala a thumbs-up. A good release!
64 • article on Debian/BSD (by ray carter at 2009-11-09 15:55:24 GMT from United States)
Sometime when you can fit it in, I'd really appreciate an article or review on a Debian BSD install - sounds interesting!
65 • @60 - Octathalon (by kellerman on 2009-11-09 15:57:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
As far as I am aware the Mandriva Control Center is GTK based anyway. It should work just as well in Gnome/KDE.
66 • My Ubuntu 9.10 experience, so far. (by Robert I. Baker on 2009-11-09 16:02:21 GMT from United States)
I seem to be one of the lucky ones so far! My Ubuntu 9.10 desktop installation is 3 days old and was acquired over the internet: I had just installed Ubuntu 9.04 desktop to replace Win XP and It wasn't long before I saw an invitation on my screen to update to the newer version. I accepted, and it installed right over my connection, without a disk.
The computer is a relic: A year 2002 Aopen mobo with an Intel P3 at only 550 MHz., and, 768 Megs of cheap old 100 MHz RAM. It's not even the right ram for the board: it's designed for SPD. The Video card is an old 3DFX Voodoo with 16MHz RAM with the broken cooling fan removed! There is a basic soundblaster card in a PCI slot, and, a cheap Belkin USB WLAN dongle in the rear USB port.
Both 9.04 and 9.10 saw them all and they all worked without loading any separate software or drivers. Basic Flash functionality worked almost immediately: a one click download to the Firefox Browser. I could listen to the new bbc.co.uk/radio flash based content, and, see the moving pictures on the New York Times web site.
Then I visited an on line dance music station (www.di.fm) and chose an MP3 stream. "Movieplayer" came up, and, invited me to download plug-ins. I accepted, and wound up with a message saying the software installed, but not all the requested plug -ins were installed. However, I simply chose to close "Movieplayer" and then bring it back up by re-selecting the MP3 stream I wanted, and it worked fine!
I created two short but important documents using the "Openoffice" word processor and got them mailed out using my web based email. No hiccups there either. I also used the Ubuntu Software center to get VLC media Player installed, haven't tested that yet but I found it is now easier to find the software I want. This distro seems better organized.
The IBM compatible PC hardware universe out there is extremely diverse and I don't doubt that many are having trouble. But for me, at least so far, this distro means a workhorse computer instead of a landfill discard. Some final notes: before the first install, I used the "systemrescue" distro to erase my hard drive. And, The 3DFX "Voodoo" card only gets 800 x 600, not a shortcoming in my case, Another card would fix it anyway. I'm on the relic right now. My best to the community!
67 • @58 (by blonderabbette on 2009-11-09 16:12:50 GMT from United States)
You should try Chakra! Easy Arch based Distro currently alpha-3 but works great here!!
68 • Smooth (by Brad Bellomo on 2009-11-09 16:14:13 GMT from United States)
I ran a kUbuntu 64-bit upgrade (not clean install) from 9.04 the weekend of the release. Everything went smooth, no new issues, a few KDE drawing issues were fixed, and the whole thing took about as long as installing M.S. Office.
69 • #30. HP Mini 311-1000NR (by jack on 2009-11-09 16:15:50 GMT from Canada)
Would it be possible for you to try accessing the sesame.org site to see if the mouse works and if there is no jerkiness?
(grand- kids!)
thanks
70 • Mandriva 2010 (by Robert Fox on 2009-11-09 16:24:16 GMT from Germany)
Congratulations on a fantastic release! Mandriva has succeeded in producing a well rounded distribution and that "perfect" balance for both power users and new users alike.
I have tried most mainstream distros but always gravitate back to Mandriva because the standard base install is a great platform to start with.
Keep 'em coming Mandriva!
71 • Distro hopping weekend. (by KevinC on 2009-11-09 16:32:44 GMT from United States)
Installed many distros this weekend. 1st was determined to go with Chakra alpha 3 but that didn't work out so well, as upon upgrading I was notified that libcb conflicted with nvidia-utils. I tried several workarounds but then the taskbar was fubar'd and it seemed buggy and slow. So I decided to try Kubuntu 9.10...was ok, but some bugs popped up and I wasn't really convinced. Also, I played with the recent release of Mepis 8.0.12 and KDE 3.5/ Amarok 1.4---made me have flashbacks to when all was good. ;>) Next up was Ubuntu Karmic 64 bit and so far it's ran a treat. No issues other a little weirdness with k3b (and after all it's a qt4 proggy)....but I havta go with it b/c I can't hang with Brasero. Also, played with the Madriva 2010 KDE 32 bit incarnation and it was sweet as well. Best KDE 4 implementation I've seen as of yet & no bugs noted...if only they offered One in a 64 bit version, as this computer I'm testing on has 8 gigs of ddr2 that I would like to be put to use if needed. O...and the Mandriva Gnome 2010 was nice as well. Also dl'ed Utilex...that was awesome. Probably would never would've tried Slax...& it ran great on my netbook (Asus eee1200ha). Slax is fairly robust for a live CD. Tried Puppy as well and Puppy is Puppy...was more impressed with Slax tho.
72 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Carl Stephenson at 2009-11-09 16:32:46 GMT from United States)
I've had a solidly positive experience running Karmic on 2 desktops and a laptop. For my hardware, this is the best Ubuntu yet.
73 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Michael Dotson on 2009-11-09 16:42:17 GMT from United States)
As much as I hate to say it, I agree will all the negative news about this release, but maybe for different reasons. I typically keep one windows and one linux partition on my main drive, and use two USB hard drives to try out new linux distro;s I may be interested in. To date I have tried Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Ubunti 9.10. They all run fine in live CD mode, but I have yet to get one to install and run on my 320GB usb connected drive. All previous versions of Ubuntu still work fine, as does the new Mandriva 2010 now happily residing there. I believe the problem rest in grub 2 configuration files in recognizing the usb drive, but I have yet to locate an answer or figure out what is wrong. In grub 1 a few adjustments to menu.list always fixed boot problems, but that no longer works. While not my favorite resort, I aslo tried a Wubi install on windows 7 which failed miserably even in compatability mode for vista. Again, Wubi works fine in 9.04 and earlier versions when compatability mode is set for vista. I suspect if I installed to my main PC hard drive Ubuntu 9.10 would work, but I usually test on the USB drive first before deciding which one to set as my main linux distro. This edition seems a bit of a setback when compared to earlier bunto's.
74 • Ubuntu (by dragonmouth on 2009-11-09 16:46:31 GMT from United States)
Most distros will present no problems if they are run as installed. It is once one tries to tailor the distro to one's needs and desires that problems arise. What I have never liked about the Ubuntu and its variants, is Canonical's insistence on integrating all the packages with each other and the kernel. For example, as an English speaker I do not need or will ever use the non-Latin alphabet based languages such as Thai, Japanese, Korean, etc. Any attempt to remove them results in the removal not only of those language packs but also Open Office, any editors and many system packages, rendering the entire distro unusable. A similar situation exists with printer drivers. It is laudable that Canonical includes drivers for many families of printers. However, these drivers should be removable once the install is done. Instead they are integrated into CUPS and the kernel. Other Debian-based distros, such as Mepis and Sidux, do not have such dependency problems.
75 • #56- Neutral? Where did you get that idea? (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-09 16:47:14 GMT from United States)
DistroWatch Weekly always starts with these words: "DistroWatch Weekly is a weekly opinion column..." By definition an opinion is not neutral. It's not meant to be. What ever gave you the idea that DWW is supposed to be neutral and offer no opinions when it advertises itself as precisely the opposite?
76 • Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" -- My experiences with it (by A Telco Security Dweeb on 2009-11-09 16:47:55 GMT from Canada)
Ubuntu 9.10 ("Karmic Koala") has been, in my experience, by far the best value in operating system software that I have ever come across; it is a fantastic product. Frankly, I can't BELIEVE that Canonical is giving this software away for free.
That said, I do not believe the initial setup experiences that I had with it (a fresh install, not an upgrade, on a HP laptop), were as positive as they were with the previous, 9.04 ("Jaunty Jackalope") version. In particular :
(1.) By far the biggest problem was, the system is almost unusable if you do not disable IPv6 support -- it is impossible to effectively surf the Web. Fortunately, the fix for this is quite easy, but Canonical never should have had this protocol enabled by default. (Admittedly, there are many similar complaints against Windows 7, which apparently has the same problem.)
(2.) If your WLAN networking hardware (mine uses the B43 chipset) isn't natively supported by Open Source drivers, the Ubuntu setup system should offer you the choice to use the proprietary drivers instead. I had to manually hunt down the "Hardware Drivers" applet to do this with, something that would leave many inexperienced users completely stumped.
(3.) I think Canonical should just bite the bullet, install multimedia CODECs like those for MP3s, DVDs, etc., by default, and then dare the entertainment industry to sue them. Even if Canonical lost -- which I think unlikely -- it would show the utter intellectual bankruptcy of the entertainment industry, in trying to prevent users of free software from listening to compressed music and watching compressed movies. I understand why Canonical is gun-shy on this front, but someone has to stand up to the MPAA, RIAA, Fraunhoefer, etc. on this subject.
77 • Ubuntu haters. (by Erik Birch Hansen on 2009-11-09 16:50:16 GMT from Denmark)
I use Kubuntu 9.10 on my Toshiba Satellite A200 and every piece of hardware works out of the box. I use Ubuntu 9.10 Remix on my Aspire One with 8 GB SSD disk and it works fine here too. Installing Kubuntu 9.10 on a friend's HP dv6000 laptop works fine.
So here you have many different hardware types which are detected without any errors and don't need workarounds.
Printers, cardreaders and Wacom Volito 2 works as soon they are connected.
I would'nt go for another OS at this time.
78 • No subject (by jg on 2009-11-09 16:51:41 GMT from United States)
Had never-ending problems with Ubuntu. Switched to Debian Testing, which has been a godsend. The latter is more stable, all of the software in the repository actually works, is properly documented, and is faster and leaner. The problem with Ubuntu is that they take all those Debian packages (tested on Debian by the many Debian devs), and then hack some really questionable Canonical stuff (like Upstart) into the distro. But Canonical doesn't have the manpower to then go and retest all of those Debian packages on their hacked version of Debian, especially within a 6 month timeframe, so Canonical just assumes the recompiled Debian packages will work. Oops. They sometimes get broken by the Canonical hacks. Ubuntu is the distro to use if you want to know what regressions are all about. That's why things that worked before (and/or work in Debian) suddenly don't work now (in Ubuntu).
But by far the worst thing is Canonical's attempt to subvert the Debian dev process in order to transparently get all those Debian devs working to fix the problems Canonical creates. Canonical has been working hard to get Debian to adopt a 6 month release cycle that just happens to coincide with Ubuntu's. And Canonical's CTO even suggested that Ubuntu should become an official "dev branch" of Debian, so that Debian devs can waste their precious time repairing the breakage to Debian caused by Ubuntu devs. Ubuntu has become a very bad thing for Debian, and Canonical's influence should be resisted lest that turn the quality of Debian into the horror that is Ubuntu. Debian just works. Ubuntu doesn't.
79 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by bert07 on 2009-11-09 16:54:16 GMT from Belgium)
I must say: I completely agree with Rip Van Winkle (Post #7) and I've been saying that for over a year now: Canonical should at least enlarge the beta period, and indeed the every 6 months release seems to be putting all the developers on way too much strain.
So, I think it to be better to release one, very stable release once a year, than releasing two releases that cause so much frustration for a great number of people.
Both end-users and coders shall benefit from that.
80 • The whole Ubuntu back-and-forth (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-09 16:55:37 GMT from United States)
As I've said many times in the past sucess (or lack thereof) with any given distro depends very much on the hardware being used. Almost any Linux distro can be made to work with any supported hardware. The question is how much work will it take and how many fixes/workarounds will you have to go through to get it all working the way it should.
For me Karmic Koala is the first release of Ubuntu where everything "just worked" in a long time. Reboot on my old Toshiba Satellite 1805-S204 has been broken since Feisty Fawn. It is finally fixed in Karmic. With the HP netbook everything went absolutely smoothly as well. Someone referred to Edgy Eft as a "disaster". Funny, for me that was the best release Ubuntu had since Karmic. I had a really wide variety of hardware to try Edgy on and it all just worked.
Anyway, rather than using The Register or some other computing news source to judge Ubuntu you might want to try it for yourself. Also, if things don't "just work" it might just be worth the time and a trip to the forum to find out why and whether it can be fixed easily or not.
81 • Yeah, Ubuntu is that bad. (by Earthwyrm on 2009-11-09 17:03:27 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu's "thousand paper cuts" needs an additional "thousand knife wounds".
82 • #7, 79: If you prefer a one year release cycle... (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-09 17:16:38 GMT from United States)
If you prefer a one year release cycle (and I agree that does seem to be optimal) then why not just use a distro with an annual cycle. OpenSUSE, Pardus, and VectorLinux come to mind off the top of my head and I am sure there are people here who could name another five or six solid, user friendly distros that go with annual releases.
Just because Ubuntu and Fedora are the most popular distros that doesn't mean that you have to use them. A few years ago Ubuntu was almost an unknown. Try something that seems to fit your needs better and if you have good results let people know. You might just help lead people to the next big distro.
83 • #71 (by Holon on 2009-11-09 17:23:24 GMT from United States)
Give Pardus 2009 a try. KDE is very nice in that distro. Xubuntu (Karmic) is running nicely on this machine.
84 • Ubuntu is great, way better than before (by Duhnonymous on 2009-11-09 17:24:27 GMT from United States)
I haven't had one problem. As far as I'm concerned, all this whining is really just Microsoft-sponsored FUD, and part of their Windows 7 marketing campaign.
85 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Jeremy on 2009-11-09 17:28:15 GMT from United States)
I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 and experienced no problems. In fact, I experienced the contrary.
In 9.04, I had to tweak my settings in order to get audio to work on my laptop, and for whatever reason, sound was only audible when the volume was about 75% or higher.
It would get very loudly very quickly with the slightest increases in the volume mixer above that point. With 9.10, I no longer have that problem.
Now I can be lazy and use my keyboard's volume controls and not have to either get blasted out of the room or left in silence from tapping the button just once one way or the other.
It was a solid release for me.
86 • ubuntu is fine (by Reuben on 2009-11-09 17:37:35 GMT from United States)
I have kubuntu 9.10 running on my thinkpad. I originally installed it from one of the alphas, and kept on upgrading it until I got the release. Works just fine.
OTH, this weekend I decided to upgrade my mythtv box from gentoo to slackware 13. The installer formated the wrong partitions. I reinstalled, and everything works just fine.
87 • 9.10 display resolution (by EH on 2009-11-09 17:41:19 GMT from United States)
Unlike in 9.04, I can't get any options for resolution besides 800x600 and 640x480, and as usual the Ubuntu forums are unhelpful, filled with tons of people who jump all over a topic but are utterly unequipped to offer useful advice (better forum advice is one reason I prefer other distros, like openSUSE). Graphics card is Intel X3100, not too exotic, and monitor is a 1920x1080 lcd. Normally, I think I could fix this, but I'm not very tuned into how this whole config-less X is supposed to work, nor have I figured out yet what the grub2 equivalent of menu.lst is supposed to be. I only tried this out on one machine, the media center, but will probably reinstall with SUSE this week.
88 • Karmic Koala (by Kiefer on 2009-11-09 17:44:20 GMT from United States)
I've been a distro hopper for a long time. Installed Karmic about five days ago. It's been working wonderfully. I can't believe all this negative publicity for this release. I'll probably buy some of their ubuntu store T-shirts and other knicknacks to support this distro. I am a flinty sort so this says something about how good this distro is.
89 • @35: Debian freeze, kernels, etc. (by Julian Andres Klode on 2009-11-09 18:00:00 GMT from Germany)
@35 - Debian will most probably freeze in March 2010, and not in December (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2009/10/msg00002.html). AFAIK; no Canonical employees will do payed work on Debian (Mark suggested this for the December freeze, but it will be March).
For the kernel, AFAIK the plan in Debian is to ship with 2.6.32 (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2009/10/msg00003.html), and I guess Ubuntu will be doing the same.
But now I should really do something more useful than replying to such comments.
90 • Karmic (by Stephen Tanner on 2009-11-09 18:10:23 GMT from United States)
I have been running the 9.10 (KDE 4) for a few weeks and it feels like the first KDE setup that I have spent less time fighting and more time just using my computer.
91 • ubuntu 9.10 grub2 (by kevred on 2009-11-09 18:15:38 GMT from New Zealand)
Ubuntu 9.10 seems to work well on single drive systems but a known bug in the new grub 2 boot loader has caused its share of problems if you have more than one drive you should ensure ubuntu 9.10 and grub2 are on the same drive. Another know issue is large file transfers ext4 ubuntus workaround use ext3 until they fix it.
These two bugs where reported weeks before the final release
grub2 is still in beta .
Having used ubuntu since warty ubuntu has been improving in leaps and bounds but until grub 2 issues are fixed I'll stick with 9.04.
92 • Karmic statistics (by AliasMarlowe on 2009-11-09 18:23:31 GMT from Sweden)
Statistics and publications such as The Register often have unnatural relationships. I commented on this also in the Slashdot discussion http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429898&cid=29974872
Gathering statistics on Ubuntu problems is not easy. Essentially, one can point to a small set of people who report problems in a public forum such as ubuntuforums.org, but these are a self-selected subset and thus unrepresentative of the general population of upgraders. This is the data The Register relied on, but one cannot infer statistics for all Karmic installers/upgraders from this set. The number with problems is definitely much greater than the few who reported issues at ubuntuforums.org, but is still unknown.
On a related note, it's also rather tricky to estimate the actual number of Ubuntu installations. The unofficial counter at http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org exceeds 19 million torrent downloads since 12 September. Canonical does not release numbers on direct downloads from the main servers and mirrors, which would be in addition to the torrents. Finally, we don't know the ratio of installations to downloads (whether installed as single-boot, dual.-boot, VM, or failed/deleted installations).
FWIW, all of my installations/upgrades of Karmic went fine. 4 PCs + 1 VM at home, 1 VM at work. I've been using Ubuntu on one of the home PCs since the beta of Breezy, and only had an upgrade problem once in all that time (damned network went down during a network-based upgrade, to feisty or gutsy AFAIR).
93 • Ubuntu karmic koala (by Wanas on 2009-11-09 18:28:36 GMT from Egypt)
Karmic koala is working perfect for me
I have 2 problems: the 1st with firefox slow scrolling in the google reader and the other problem is with the panel transparency, other than that every thing is working perfect.
94 • GRUB 2 (by Xtyn on 2009-11-09 18:35:53 GMT from Romania)
I'm really tired of all this whining about GRUB 2. A lot of work has been put in this new version. GRUB 2 supports ext4, almost everyone is switching to ext4.
Yeah, I had some problems with ext3/ext4 and GRUB legacy/GRUB 2 (because different distros had different bootloaders/FS) but I just learned how to use GRUB 2. It isn't that difficult. Do you want to use GRUB legacy forever?
Mostly distrohoppers have problems with GRUB 2. GRUB 2 will work perfectly when every distro will switch to ext4 and GRUB 2.
Some guy said some stupid stuff about GRUB 2 messing his partition table and that Fedora was better. Fedora actually messed the partition table because it needed a separate ext3 /boot partition.
Some useful stuff (as root):
grub-mkconfig - this generates the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file automatically
grub-install /dev/sda - this installs it (to MBR in this case)
nano /boot/grub/grub.cfg - from here you can edit the file
If you have os-prober installed, it will be easier to detect automatically other OS's from the grub-mkconfig command. I think Ubuntu has os-prober installed by default.
95 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-11-09 18:43:19 GMT from United States)
Longtime Ubuntu user. No problems with 3 different installs/upgrades except the trivial usb modem modprobe. I think I stick with Ubuntu because I have been using it for so long, I can fix the breaks without too much effort compared to a "new to me" distro that might do things a different way.
96 • forgot something (by Xtyn on 2009-11-09 18:45:58 GMT from Romania)
After "grub-mkconfig", you should do a "update-grub", after that "grub-install /dev/sda".
97 • @6 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-11-09 18:53:46 GMT from Canada)
It's intrinsically difficult to build a distro on KDE 4 or GNOME which will work fast booted live with restricted hardware. There's just too much data transfer to happen. Slow optical drives and little RAM will inevitably have that consequence. Mandriva provides Xfce and LXDE live builds for exactly these cases, so it'd be a great idea to try with one of those.
98 • @24 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-11-09 18:55:15 GMT from Canada)
the graphical installer (rpmdrake) and the console tools (urpm*) use the exact same dependency solving code, so they shouldn't produce different results. urpm* may have different defaults in some cases and may offer options that rpmdrake doesn't, though. exactly what discrepancy did you observe between them? If searching in rpmdrake isn't returning everything you'd expect, check the package filter is set to 'all packages', not 'GUI only'.
99 • @60 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-11-09 18:57:54 GMT from Canada)
The Mandriva Control Center is exactly the same in GNOME as in KDE. As someone else mentioned, its GUI is actually written in GTK+, though this isn't terribly relevant, really.
100 • Kubuntu 9.10 and Mandriva (by Untitled on 2009-11-09 19:00:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Just to add my voice to the noise, I've installed Kubuntu 9.10 on three different machines (one of which is 7 years old with 512mb RAM) and it works fine on all three, and all hardware was detected without any issues.
A while ago I was using Mandriva for a while and liked quite a few things about it, but there were few things which I disliked and which made me eventually give the space to Kubuntu. Anyway, I decided to try and install it today in VirtualBox just to see how I feel about it now. First, I find Mandriva to still be quite a looker which might not be the most import thing, but it's nice to have. Second, of all the distros I've tried in VirtualBox, Mandriva was the first that had full integration with VirtualBox (mouse integration, etc) without having to install the guest additions. I find that a very nice touch that they think about all the ways that people might use the distro. Then I ran into a few minor issues which probably means I won't give Mandriva the prime time on my machines just yet.
101 • Zenix (by Elder V. LaCoste on 2009-11-09 19:08:08 GMT from United States)
Nice Xubuntu re-mix here: http://zenix-os.net/
102 • Ubuntu -- Only one minor problem. (by Bob Howell on 2009-11-09 19:17:08 GMT from United States)
I did a live update last week. It made a few things squirelly. K3B could not see my DVD drive. I reinstalled K3B -- still didn't see it.
I did a fresh install this weekend. The only issue was popping noises after each sound executed. Following a thread's advice, a cut the powersave option to "No" and the problem went away. Installed K3B on the fresh install -- no problems. Installed Virtual Box and restored a Windows instance. Worked fine. I played around pretty hard and had no other issues.
103 • Mandriva 2010 (by Don G on 2009-11-09 19:27:34 GMT from United States)
Mandriva 2010 KDE loaded fine, works and looks great. However, I did discover one glitch. If I tried to download two packages in a row I would get a message on the second one that "files were missing" and so it would fail to load. I found that I had to exit Add and Remove Software and then log back in if I wanted to download more than one package. I downloaded a second copy of Mandriva from a different source thinking the first copy had a problem but I got the same results. Ubuntu, Mint and the previous verson of Mandriva work fine on this computer. Any comments?
104 • ubuntu (by Twodogs on 2009-11-09 19:50:12 GMT from United States)
I put Karmic Koala on my computers the day it came out. It runs great on my laptop (eeePC) and desktop (iMac) and does everything perfectly. The only thing I did was add a script that changes my GDM/Splash background according to what wallpaper I'm using. I also got rid of the 'Cyborg' thing and went with Swarm. Much cooler. I have not had any problems thus far.
I do agree that maybe Canonical should maybe release once a year instead of six months. Nice Distrowatch Weekly!
105 • 8 month cycle, how about it? (by Anony Moss on 2009-11-09 20:23:49 GMT from India)
Ubuntu releases every 4th release as LTS, with a 6 month release cycle. That makes one LTS release every 24 months. 4 releases, 24 months.
An 8 month cycle would only extend a release by 2 months, and there's still be an LTS release every 2 years. 3 releases, 24 months. Many of us will trade 2 months for a better tested, more stable release in a cinch.
As far as the issue of regression goes- I used to think the same thing that there is a big lack of this sort of testing in popular distros. But lately I've been wondering if many of these regression issues happen due to kernel changes. Its still a pity though to see the previous release of a distro work like a charm on one hardware, only to find the next release go horribly wrong on the same setup.
106 • The Ubuntu Problem (by Michael Bæk on 2009-11-09 20:24:47 GMT from Denmark)
Hooray for all the people who didn't experience problems upgrading to U9.10. Thankfully you are still the majority.
As much as the succes stories might warm Mark Shuttleworth's heart, these stories are not that important right now. In order to innovate and compete Canonical needs to focus on the people having problems. Two major issues:
1) For each release the portion of users experiencing a trouble free install should increase. This is not the case.
2) It is completely unacceptable if hardware that used to work suddenly stops working as a result of a new release. For many users this is the case.
Canonical will understand this or Ubuntu will fail.
107 • Ubuntu (by Sultan Khan on 2009-11-09 20:33:47 GMT from Canada)
This release, like all others in the past couple of years has been a great disappointment. IMHO, 7.10 was the best release and its now been going downhill quality-wise. I have NEVER had a fully successful upgrade with Ubuntu; I always end up having to do a clean install - and still deal with bugs. In comparison, Arch Linux - a distro that is supposedly more complicated always just works after upgrades, without and fuss. It is pointless marketing Ubuntu to beginners if geeks cant get it to work properly.
108 • OpenSSH Donation (by Robby Workman on 2009-11-09 20:34:54 GMT from United States)
Great decision by DW to donate to OpenSSH; it's hard to imagine a more necessary piece of software than that, at least from where I sit (with ssh sessions open on several different machines) :-)
109 • Re:# 106 (by Untitled on 2009-11-09 20:35:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't think all the problems are Ubuntu's fault and I don't think they can solve all problems. If we take 9.04 for example, many owners of PCs and Laptops with ATI graphics (me included on one manchine) found out that their card was given the legacy status by ATI and don't work with the proprietary drivers anymore. There wasn't much that Ubuntu can do about it except of not keeping back xorg, which wouldn't work for how long. This is not a Linux problem only as Windows 7 users now find they have the same issues with the same cards. We have to accept that if we want to keep up to date with software, at one point the hardware will have to be replaced as well.
Anyway, it's good to finally see so many people coming out of the woods saying that things with 9.10 aren't as bad as they were made to be. Maybe we should take our own statistics and send a press release to The Register.
110 • Karmic works just fine... (by Caraibes on 2009-11-09 20:40:15 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Been using Ubuntu on & off since 4.10...
I happily upgraded my main box to 64bit Karmic from Jaunty... No problem whatsoever...
I also installed Xubuntu 32bit Karmic... Just fine...
Last Friday I install Karmic UNR (netbook remix) on a friend's Eee 1000 something... Just fine, everything just worked...
I already commented on that last week, but wanted to voice my experience since there are various types of satisfaction level...
111 • YASKU (Yet Another Satisfied Karmic User) (by Luisg at 2009-11-09 20:44:43 GMT from Colombia)
After buying a new HP laptop on december/2008, I went on a distro hopping through Debian (AMD RM-70 is somewhat picky about kernel version), Opensuse (slow package manager, sloooooow usb transfer), Sidux (unstable, can't handle cpu scaling, ia32 not recommended) and Mint (slow update manager). I don't mean those are horrible distros, and probably there are solutions for the problems I found, but I'm lazy and didn't bother to investigate any further. Then I installed Ubuntu 9.04, which was not without glitches (horrible pulseaudio), but I was able to work around them. This time, I installed Karmic the very next day after release and it has worked perfectly on my laptop. Of course, YMMV, but you can't judge a distro based on someone else anecdotical experience.
112 • DWW Article (by AU on 2009-11-09 21:01:55 GMT from Germany)
This was a great DWW edition. Many interesting subjects were mentioned.
---
I liked the Mandriva review.
It is good to know that Mandriva did another excellent release. The distribution is not as well known as openSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu, but Mandriva has its own tools and own strengths and it can be a very good alternative.
"It may interest people to know that, by default, Mandriva creates a guest account on the system. This is a generic user account with limited privileges, handy for administrators who want to let other people use their computer without handing out a password. On the downside, it's an extra user account with no password protecting it. This account can be altered or removed, like any other user account, from the Control Centre."
I actually think that it is a good idea to encourage a guest account for most home desktop users. Most people do not think about others using their computer when they are installing. And when the time comes that somebody else needs to use the computer they do not want to do the extra work to create a new account.
Another question is if it is better to have a password or no password for this account. The guest account is only meant for local access and a password is an inconvenience. It would be best to give the choice during installation: guest account or not, and if yes, password or not.
"This behaviour pattern seemed to repeat itself throughout the distribution: at first, there are lots of windows offering help or asking for information. However, once this initial wave subsides, Mandriva gets out of the way and lets you get to work. This sort of thing may irritate experienced Linux users, but for people on unfamiliar ground, this method of doing things will probably be greatly appreciated."
I think that this is the right way to go in many cases. The alternatives are either to choose a default and require initiative from the user to seek out the option if he wants to have it changed (the advanced user way) or to simplify things by completely leaving out the option (the GNOME way).
"Examining the performance side of things, Mandriva isn't exactly slow, but it's not likely to win any races against other Linux distributions either. The user-friendly approach, along with KDE 4, makes Mandriva a fairly heavy distro and I would recommend running it only on machines with at least 1 GB of RAM, preferably more. Less than 1 GB of RAM is likely to result in sluggish performance."
Well, KDE4 is heavy. I think it requires 1 GiB of memory to run well. But is Mandriva KDE4 worse than other KDE4 distro's?
---
Adam Williamson: "Fedora 12 should be one of the highest quality Fedora releases for a while.
That is a funny statement. Does this mean that we can expect Fedora 13 (and 14, 15, 16) to be worse than Fedora 12?
---
"Similar stories have been told on other web sites, including the distribution's official forums. Is the latest Ubuntu really bad, or is it just the case of a vocal minority making a mountain out of a hill?"
Well, isn't this a bit expected? Ubuntu is based on Debian Unstable. That means you get the lastest software, but you can't expect perfect stability and quality control.
----
Tiny Core Linux 2.5 released. It looks like development is still going fast.
---
OpenSSH receives US$350.00. Nice. A useful piece of software that many people rely on.
For a future donation I would like to suggest KDevelop. :)
113 • Ubuntu (by Zebedee on 2009-11-09 21:19:21 GMT from Germany)
Absolutely no complaints from me. The only Ubuntu release that i really had no time for (and i'm a user since dapper drake) was jaunty, which was so difficult for me to get working on my hardware that i decided to stay with intrepid. Karmic however works a breeze after doing a fresh install of Kubuntu. The only thing you could even consider to be a problem was that it failed to automatically detect my windows network printer....
114 • Ubuntu on RAID (by pko on 2009-11-09 21:23:29 GMT from Poland)
Hi,
I have been running Ubuntu since 7.04 using the 64 bit version on software raid 1. I have always been able to upgrade the system without any issues. Now I hitted the 9.10 upgrade and this has been a bumpy road. I must add that I have /home on a separate partition. I have no exotic HW.
1. The upgrade left the system in a smoke wtih a blinking screen.
2. A clean installation of the system with my old /home couldn't install neither grub legacy or grub2 on the proposed /dev/md0 (RAID). I had to manually specify (hd0). Installed with ext4.
3. I installed Nvidia 190.42 for my Asus 8500 GT. This went well.
4. Upgrade to kernel 2.6.31-15 left me in tty1 without any notification of the issue. In earlier versions you got a message that you driver was not working properly. And dkms is installed. I had to recompile the driver to get a gui.
I have full understanding that this is last chance for testing before releasing LTS. But to me it looks that Canonical has been digging to deep leaving a hole behind them. For sure this has been a disappointment to me.
And to comment on the MS way / clean install. I find that any OS should be able to be upgraded without doing a clean install. If this is not working sorrry back to drawing table and improve. This is just my humble personal opinion.
I have overcome the hurdles and the system is working now, but don't expect that a simple user to fix it. So if the goal for Ubuntu is to satisfy the masses, better luck next time! This is 'not' it.
115 • Ubuntu Karmic Koala (by R. J. Jeremy Kozlowski on 2009-11-09 21:28:38 GMT from Canada)
I found the upgrade to Karmic Koala went smooth. I had no troubles and, for me, this is the best Ubuntu ever. It's speed increased a huge amount! I used to have problems with some Compiz settings being slow, but now everything is so fast. Read more reasons why I love the koala: http://sites.google.com/site/rjjeremyk/
I wonder if a lot of the people having problems are on older computers...?
116 • ubuntu works for me (by ForeverNoob on 2009-11-09 21:37:03 GMT from Israel)
After playing around with many distros for the last couple of years, I finally abandoned Windows and switched over to Linux. Ubuntu was the reasonable choice because of its huge community, which means better support for newbies like me. I installed 9.10 on the day it came out and never had a problem since. Everything "just works", nothing to complain of.
117 • ubuntu (by ritch on 2009-11-09 21:54:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
my expereince of unbuntu was it worked wonderfully in live mode but as usual blank screen when using a ati card..(have a 3650 an x1650 pro and a x700)
grub when installed on 3 computers just failed and flashed a non responsive cursour at me
there is something massively broken with unbuntu's installer (it was the easist and most reliable onpar with the mandriva installer until know), for the first time on ubuntu the installer failed completely.. even when told manually where to set up grub for a dual booted system using two hard drives.. (grub just blinked an unresponsive flashing cursour at me) even with a default installation on a single harddrive machine.
x failed with unbuntu as did kubuntu and studio! all failed to deliver a display with 3 different working ati cards x worked fine with a nividia 5, 6 series and a 9 series cards
want so much to like ubuntu (espesially since this version looked so much nicer slick and proffesional in live mode....i'd love to play with it but it won't install grub properly on 3 machine's (not a hardware or user problem) if you have a nvidia graphics card its always seamed ok
but i have mainly ati based machines and unbuntu releases rarely work on them...usual wait for a ubuntu varient with ati's drivers pre installed so i can try it
i always default back to mandriva because i always get some kind of display or terminal up i can configure
found sabayon is quite stable at delivering a stable desktop from where you can then fix any problems from as well...
would never recomend ubuntu to a windows user, if your hardwares not right you just get a crashed blank screen, if your graphics card from the right manufacturer ? its usualy fine
think 8.04 ubuntu worked the best for me so far (think the only one actually were x never failed completely) linux mint for some reason always seams to work, which i don't get since it ubuntu at its core
until linux learns if x fails to default to a basic vesa mode like windows..or at the very least default to a terminal
(some distros do or offer a safe or vesa mode!! mepis is brillant at this)
instead of a crashed blank screen it can never compete with windows
im no programmer but that should be fairly simple to do ?
i want linux to take over the desktop world!!!
n.b hardware is fine on all machines: runs all windows varients fine mandriva sabayon puppy dsl slackware etc
i hope unbuntu fixes the bugs and quickly delivers a updated version, since i'd really like to get the much slicker desktop i saw in the live mode installed and get my teeth into it
118 • No subject (by AbacusMonkey on 2009-11-09 22:08:45 GMT from Australia)
Firstly: Good choice on donating to openSSH. It's certainly a project that deserves it.
Secondly: I have installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my home desktop, and my partners laptop with no issue at all. From what I've seen it's a stellar release.
119 • failin unbuntu (by ritch on 2009-11-09 22:20:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
would like to hear if anyone has similar experiences to me from my comment on 117
as id like to trace the problem
is it cheaper chip sets on the mother boards i buy? most are asus with nvidia or via chipsets and below £50 all bar one are amd based boards, all amd are athlon proccesors half are AM2+ the rest are socket a, 1 pentium 4 2.8
120 • Ubuntu 9.10 And Updateing (by JD on 2009-11-09 22:28:19 GMT from United States)
I Have Only Had one issue with Ubuntu 9.10 and it had to do with Gstreamer
i removed the "frei0r-plugins" Package and installed "libgavl _have" to fix it. however finding this simple solution took awhile :( this only happened because i got crazy with a lot of packages i needed. one installed this conflicting package (so much for package standards!) I'm glad i did a clean install of ubuntu as most of the headaches pertain to updates (i was about to update aha!) but this leads to a sad point, When can we have real time updates with no headaches? this stinks! but i guess M$ Windows is like that too! (Windows 7 sucks by the way!)
121 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Matti on 2009-11-09 22:29:16 GMT from Finland)
Had no problems with it. But it's not because of luck. I'm on my fifth Xbox 360 right now. Ubuntu is fine.
122 • Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade experience. (by Bill Julian on 2009-11-09 22:36:27 GMT from United States)
Yielding to temptation is generally a bad idea, as in upgrading a perfectly stable 8.10 when good sense says wait a while. I didn't.
I had my first ever failure of an Ubuntu Live CD (going back to 7.10) for which md5sums were good. It simply hung every time at the same point in the install process and let me with a trashed system as well.
Since I am persistent rather than smart I reinstalled 8.10, then immediately upgraded to 9.04 and from there to 9.10 - got there, by golly!
Everything works save for hibernation. (Suspension does work) Machine seems to enter properly, but does not come out as it should. And I am seeing boot messages which suggest the machine is waiting for the UUID of a Swap file that is not yet mounted. It ultimately does boot and I am still trying to understand the message and its implications.
My opinion? "Release early and often" may no longer serve Linux well. Teams are overtaxed and it shows. How about something like "Release as often and as early as is practical and consistent with operational quality."
123 • unbuntu prob (by ritch on 2009-11-09 22:42:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
only thing i can think since there seams to be a few people talking having no comparable problems and my hardware is in good working order, maybe cheaper chipsets with my prefered combination of hardware for window's? is not as agreeable with some linux distros especially ubuntu.. next upgrade i think i may try a more expensive board and maybe move away from amd to an intel i7 or i5
124 • Ubuntu upgrade (by Sidney Skinner on 2009-11-09 23:02:59 GMT from Barbados)
No problem with ubuntu upgrade process, Correct 2.6.31 kernel installed. Only glitch is getting a weird crash in volumecontrol.py but does not seem to cause problems. Clean install xubuntu on secondary machine had no problems. Probably will later do a clean install of Ubuntu on the main machine (I have a separate /home partition) when I have time.
125 • trying unbutu again (by ritch on 2009-11-09 23:04:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
one thing i have noticed with ubuntu it tends to fix something but breaks something that was working with every release.
for me its the grub loader part of the installation thats broken but the desktop feels more profesional and slick
think the comments about having longer development times... maybe even a year rather than 6 months, would rectify this problem...
not just a problem with ubuntu but many distros...
mandriva 2007 was poor but i'd rate mandriva 2008 the best linux distro ive ever used, to 2009 being good but feeling less stable in comparision and 2010 is looking like another very good stable strong release, though i dont think it feels quite as good as 2008 did, but its early days...
scrubbed my windows pertition reformated drives reinstalled window xp on 1st hard drive reformat 2nd hard drive going for a last try if ext4 not working with grub/2 might try ext3... probably something small and stupid stopping a clean install.... wish me luck
126 • Too short ! (by Oncle Jean on 2009-11-09 23:12:39 GMT from Canada)
Many here are right, the 6 month cycle *IS* the problem. About these distros, we can read everywhere that "the bugs will be fixed in the next version". You bet... In many cases, nothing happens, of course. It's much too short to detect them and fix them. And it's not "really" worth fixing them because in just a few months, there will be another release...
The 6 month cycle is very good for the visibility of the distro, we can read tons of articles about every new release. Result: the most popular distros follow a 6 month cycle... Coincidence ???
127 • mandriva 2010 disappointment (by Simon on 2009-11-09 23:18:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm please to hear that Mandriva 2010 One is working well for many on this site. Unfortunately that was not my experience.
It booted up and worked fine as a live cd. It also installed without issue. But when I rebooted it had installed grub in the MBR despite my clearly choosing it to be installed on the root partition.
OK, I could live with that. The real crunch came when I discovered I could no longer connect to the internet. I have a straightforward adsl open DHCP router connection that no modern Linux OS should have trouble finding and connecting to. But Mandriva 2010 could only connect when used as a live cd - not installed.
It could see the connection. It claimed to be connected. But in the browser - no deal.
After an hour or more of trying to get it configured through the control pannel I gave up. I don't have the patience anymore. It should have worked without problem.
Sure, a few more hours on the forum or reading detailed configuration manuels would probably have sorted it. But I haven't got the patience considering virtually any other Linux OS could connect without all the fuss.
I was seriously disapponted as I was looking forward to Mandriva 2010. I hope others have better luck than me.
128 • Important info on the state of affairs of KDE 4 KnetworkManger (by Observer on 2009-11-09 23:33:07 GMT from Australia)
Introducing KDE 4 KNetworkManager
By: Will Stephenson
One of the few utility programs that are used every day on mobile devices is a wireless networking tool, but somehow this is one of the last applications to appear for KDE 4. With the autumn 2009 crop of Linux distributions, a usable client for the widely used NetworkManager system finally makes its debut.
Why so long?
So why did a native KDE 4 version of what is basically a system tray icon take three and a half KDE 4 releases to complete? There are several reasons. The original NetworkManager client was a GNOME applet and was developed in tandem with the server. Because of this, the NetworkManager interfaces for client developers were only partially documented.
[...]
Another reason was that the existing KDE 3 KNetworkManager needed many improvements to its user interface to fit in with other KDE 4 apps. It used the Qt3 D-Bus bindings, so this layer had to be completely rewritten as well. The current KDE 4 code shares only a few core algorithms with its predecessor. Finally, the KDE 3 KNetworkManager clients for NM 0.6 and 0.7 were developed entirely in-house at SUSE and never merged into KDE main modules, so few developers joined in and most of the work was done when necessary by SUSE engineers.
A new beginning, and a false dawn
Will Stephenson of the openSUSE KDE Team took over responsibility for the KDE 4 NetworkManager client in 2007 from another team and began coding the base D-Bus layers using the new Qt4 D-Bus bindings. At the KDE 4 Launch Event in Mountain View in January 2008, he met with Celeste Paul, Christopher Blauvelt, Sebastian Kügler and others to develop a concept for a user-friendly yet powerful NM client.
[...]
So what does the new KNetworkManager offer? At the least, a NetworkManager client provides user controllable networking. A system daemon receives configuration and commands from user programs. This is what the default nm-applet tool for GNOME offers. But since we were creating a new client from whole cloth, and with the experience of two KDE 3 clients and nm-applet to work from, we decided to improve on existing designs to make it as usable as possible.
[...]
Future directions
While we hope that users of openSUSE 11.2, Kubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 will agree that KDE 4 KNetworkManager is useful for daily wired and wireless networking, and is mostly functional for 3G mobile broadband connections, there is still a lot to be done. The number of possible networking configurations mean there are still known and undiscovered bugs, which are being fixed now. A set of final icons are being prepared by the Oxygen team. Improvements for KDE 4.4 will include a minimal UI when creating new connections, showing only the password fields necessary, and better input verification to produce connections that work first time. Mobile Broadband will be improved by the inclusion of a database of ISPs, and support for the ModemManager interface will deliver cellular signal strength. IPv6 configuration should be available soon, and it will also be possible to create and edit system-wide connections so networking is up before users log in. And by passing information about connection usage to Nepomuk, queries such as 'Which files did I download at the office yesterday?' become possible. Finally, we hope that backends for other network management stacks such as wicd, ConnMan, and the in-house tools used by Mandriva and Pardus will be written, so that a KDE user will feel at home no matter which distro he/she picks up.
Distributions working for KDE, not the other way round
[...]
http://dot.kde.org/2009/11/07/introducing-kde-4-knetworekmanager
------------
I tried openSUSE RC2 Kde4-LiveCd and had no luck in getting a working 3G MBB connection with the Huawei E160G USB modem. Also tried same modem with live cds of Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 Beta (Gnome) and they both work very well, except that in F12 it is not possible to reconnect after a disconnection (for whatever reason). Found F12 workaround to be simply to pull out and reinsert the USB modem and then click connection in nm-applet.
Cheers
129 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-09 23:49:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #127.
A good point, Simon, about a distro working first time out of the box. Of course it should just work. Like a lot of folk, you, me, the man next door, does not have the time or interest to scan reams of bug probs and their possible fixes.
From the above about folk having issues with their attempts to install U9.10...have you tried to install with as little extra hardware nailed onto your machine? And did you try without tweaking anything at all. In other words just the plain machine and no user selected configs.
Also do not expect too much from an old machine. We read of bringing new life into an old machine using a distro...fine if you are an hobbyist bit otherwise trash it and get some ex business machine running at least a P4. Said machines are not that dear cf the very latest, and are not too stoneage either.
In other words you can keep an old motor on the road, but why bother? It won't be as fuel efficient probably, may not have ABS and certainly will have difficulty in meeting tomorrow's exhaust restrictions.
Considering you get the software for free the savings over MS OS probably add up to a second hand/used/pre-owned machine anyway.
130 • Mandriva on netbook (by KJ on 2009-11-09 23:54:23 GMT from Canada)
I've been running Mandriva One 2009 (Gnome) on a previous generation netbook (can't recall specs, but only 1 GB RAM) for about half a year now and I've found it to work amazingly well. It boots in under 30 seconds and all my hardware worked perfectly. I've found it much speedier than any of the Ubuntu mixes or any Windows version. Haven't had time to upgrade to 2010 yet but so far I recommend it.
131 • Working fine (by Nelson Álvarez on 2009-11-10 00:07:23 GMT from Chile)
Karmic Koala is working fine on my Acer Aspire 5738. Even some sound problems I had with Jaunty are solved now and the startup is faster. No reason to complain about Karmic so far, at least in my case. On the contrary. I like it a lot.
132 • RE: @112 (by Jesse on 2009-11-10 00:08:23 GMT from Canada)
I agree with your point of view that whether guest accounts are good or bad will depend largely on the end user. Given Mandriva's easy-to-use reputation, I think their approach is more a benefit than a problem to most people. For people who do not like the guest account, it's very visibly displayed and easy to remove.
You asked if Mandriva with KDE is heavier than other distributions with KDE installed. My answer is yes, it is. I've used a few other Linux systems recently on the same hardware with KDE installed. Mandriva had a small, but noticeable speed difference compared to those other distros. On new hardware, people aren't likely to notice much, where as systems with a few years behind them will likely see some drag. You may have different results with different hardware and drivers of course.
133 • Hardware recognition/setup on problematic laptop screen and Intel driver (by Observer on 2009-11-10 00:45:55 GMT from Australia)
X.Org X Server 1.6.4
Release Date: 2009-9-27
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-23-server i686 Ubuntu
Ubuntu 9.10 [Screen Display looks OK but the dpi results appear bad.]
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ xdpyinfo|grep resolution
resolution: 112x968 dots per inch
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ xdpyinfo|grep dimensions
dimensions: 1280x800 pixels (289x21 millimeters)
ubuntu810 [Screen Display looks OK + dpi results OK.]
ubuntu810:~$ xdpyinfo|grep dimensions
dimensions: 1280x800 pixels (339x212 millimeters)
ubuntu810p:~$ xdpyinfo|grep resolution
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
@ubuntu810:~$
openSUSE11.0 [Screen Display looks OK + dpi results OK.]
# xdpyinfo|grep resolution
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
# xdpyinfo|grep dimensions
dimensions: 1280x800 pixels (338x211 millimeters)
:~ #
openSUSE 11.2 [Screen Display looks OK + dpi results OK.]
# xdpyinfo|grep resolution
resolution: 99x97 dots per inch (as I recall)
# xdpyinfo|grep dimensions
dimensions: 1280x800 pixels (330x210 millimeters)
:~ #
Fedora 12 Beta
X.Org X Server 1.7.0
Release Date: 2009-10-2
Fedora 12 [Screen Display looks OK + dpi results OK.]
[root@localhost ~]# xdpyinfo|grep resolution
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
[root@localhost ~]# xdpyinfo|grep dimensions
dimensions: 1280x800 pixels (338x211 millimeters)
----------
My harware details (Acer Aspire 1640 series laptop):
(II) intel(0): Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) 915GM
(--) intel(0): Chipset: "915GM"
(II) intel(0): LGPhilipsLCD
(II) intel(0): LP154W01-TLA2
(II) intel(0): EDID quirk: Detailed timings give sizes in cm.
134 • No, distros shouldn't always "just work" (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-10 00:57:55 GMT from United States)
from #129: "A good point, Simon, about a distro working first time out of the box. Of course it should just work. Like a lot of folk, you, me, the man next door, does not have the time or interest to scan reams of bug probs and their possible fixes."
No such distro exists for all hardware in all cases. No such operating system exists. If anyone has serious experience installing Windows they will tell you that it recognizes less hardware "out of the box" than Linux (and yes, that includes Windows 7) and that third party drivers and troubleshooting are often needed. The reason Windows seems to be easier to people is because it comes already loaded on their systems. Ditto MacOS. Of course, nowadays, you can choose to have Linux preloaded as well.
The fact is that operating systems, any operating systems "just work", is a myth unless they are designed to work on a very limited set of hardware components. Some troubleshooting is normal and to be expected. When an OS does "just work" (and both Mandriva and Ubuntu did for me this time) you should consider yourself lucky to a certain degree. The fact that the better Linux distributions do "just work" on a significant variety of hardware is a real credit to the developers.
I read a lot of complaining and much of it is from people with unrealistic expectations. No developer, no matter how large, can test on all possible PC hardware in all possible combinations.
135 • Colinux for Project Nomination (by Seth on 2009-11-10 01:07:54 GMT from United States)
The project is unorthodox for Open source purists, but a great project for people that cannot or will not give up (games) Windows as their main OS. Unlike virtaualization, Colinux doesn't run in a sandbox, it has access to resources and filesystem like any Windows app. The project is working on getting the kernel to run on 64 bit Windows and I'm all for supporting that. Andlinux is a Ubuntu based distro that uses the colinux kernel. http://www.andlinux.org/
136 • karmic ran over my dogma (by Ed Biow on 2009-11-10 01:14:58 GMT from United States)
I've been using 'buntu since Warthog was released in October, 2004. I have a system that I upgraded every 6 months from 5.04 to Hardy on April, 2008 (it is still happily running LTS). Most of my upgrades involved a little pain, struggling to get everything working properly, but Karmic was the only upgrade I've done that rendered a working *buntu (Jaunty) system unbootable. Maybe it is me. Instead of using the Upgrade Manager I just replaced "jaunty" with "karmic" in my sources.list. Maybe I should have commented out universe & multiverse first. But the upgrade hung on trying to upgrade some packages (amarok, some dependencies) and wouldn't let me uninstall the offending stuff with apt-get. The kernel didn't get upgraded. I finally grew frustrating and tried a reboot and now the install won't get past attempting to mount the file system.
I was going to do a fresh install of Mandriva 2010.0 on the partitions but neither the live KDE nor Gnome CD would get me to the GUI (with a pretty bog-standard Geforce MX200 AGP card). Attempts to use drakx to fix the problem failed. When I tried to use vi to change the driver from nvidia 96xx to NV the system froze up, I couldn't even switch to a TTY. No change to the file should do that. I'm done with Mandriva for this cycle. I don't feel up with mucking with Grub2, I think this box is going to get Debian stable. As Lenny said about Homer "Everyone makes mistakes. That's why they put erasers on pencils."
137 • Ubunutu 9.10 install -- no dice (by demopublican on 2009-11-10 01:29:22 GMT from United States)
I installed 9.10 fresh on a computer, auto HD partition etc... install went smooth, but I'm having button response issues on Java apps and the mouse (need to use the spacebar) and jittery screen effect, even with Fusion turned off (ATI graphics, Shuttle Glamor box). Also, I run CANopen devices and all my drivers are working weird or not working at all (recompile does nothing), so I'm DOA. Also, I run some high rate apps overnight and they crash by morning.
So in the end, if you have CPU intensive apps, I'd skip 9.10--I'm looking at going back to 8.10, BUT need QT4.5!
138 • Ubuntu 9.10 upgrades/installs (by Roszyk on 2009-11-10 01:45:59 GMT from United States)
having done multiple upgrades and installs over the last week or so without issues I can only ask what all the fuss is about. I've done a 64 bit Dell system, a netbook (Acer Aspire One), an old pentium 3 white box, an emachines budget system and a Gateway pentium 4 box. The Dell and Acer were upgrades while the older systems were clean installs. The Windows 7 RC would only run on the 64 bit Dell computer (It's now a dual boot with Ubuntu 9.10), I did not try the netbook. I'm sure many had problems but compared to the multitudes that downloaded the ISOs the relative few that had problems are unfortunately a very vocal minority.
139 • Windows drivers and hardware (by Jesse on 2009-11-10 01:58:09 GMT from Canada)
I tend to agree with Ms Martin, a vanilla copy of Windows has very limited support for hardware. I don't think I've ever had all hardware recognized on a Windows PC out of the box and I have done hundreds of fresh installs on hardware ranging from netbooks to heavy workstations, from Acer to Toshiba and back down the alphabet. Oddly, it's almost always the network adaptor and video cards that don't seem to get set up properly. This leads to a cyclic problem of "You don't have a network driver, would you like to download one from Microsoft?" Wait, what?
Of course, a lot of people avoid using vanilla Windows as a result, instead using hardware specific images. The Windows market share makes it easy to find drivers for most things, where as hunting down third party drivers for Linux is usually a losing battle.
140 • Tres Bien! (by Michel Lambert on 2009-11-10 02:16:36 GMT from United States)
It appears that Mandriva have hit on a good strategy: release just after Ubuntu and reap all the disappointed upgraders!
Will we start to see other major distros following Mandriva's lead?
141 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Paul Gibson on 2009-11-10 02:42:25 GMT from United States)
I did a full install rather than upgrade.
My initial experience was good. Most minor issues I experienced with the previous edition were solved.
The only problem I've encountered is networking. I'm an inexperienced GNU/Linux user so I can't comment technically on the issue except to say there seems to be a problem with either Samba or Nautilus or both, that is keeping me from having a reliable network with my mac and other Linux computer.
Windows Vista has no problem with file sharing.
I tend to think that Ubuntu should tone down new development . . . let's say for every other release cycle and concentrate on fixing stuff like my never ending problem with no shutdown sound and changing startup sound (picky, I know).
This brings me to my other complaint about the new Ubuntu (that I haven't spent time investigating yet) how to change sound themes???
Thanks.
142 • @97 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-10 02:56:02 GMT from United States)
Why is there so much data transfer?
Are you familiar with Window Maker?
What is the gain from having all this data transfer?
What does Gnome or KDE do that Xfce or Lxde do not?
Or even Window Maker...
Thanks for your time....
143 • Mandriva the perfect window killar (by Sanjay on 2009-11-10 03:00:39 GMT from India)
No surprise the way Mandriva lead the market with its innovative ideas, now its become the perfect windows 7 killar , to read more please visit
http://distrolove.blogspot.com/2009/11/mandriva-2010-final-perfect-window.html
144 • Mandriva on PC with dual monitors (by Taigong on 2009-11-10 04:19:14 GMT from Canada)
On my old pc with AMD 3800+, 1.5G ram, one pci video card and one AGP card, Mandriva (and its derivatives PCLOS, MCN) was the only distro that can automatically detect the two cards and use both screens. I found this out when I tried Mandriva 2008.0. There were some problems, but it generally worked. When 2008.1 came out, I had some difficulties to set up the dual monitors but eventually got it working. But, things got worse, both 2009.0, 2009.1 didn't work properly. So, I stayed with 2008.1. Last week, I tried 2010.0. It recognized the dual-monitor setting and both screens worked. But, the left and right screen were switched. I tried all the configuration tools (there are three places that you can modified display settings). But no luck. Eventually, I gave up. Instead, I just switched the connections. But that lead to my Windows screens switched. Luckily, with Windows, I can easily switch the left and right screen.
With the old Mandriva, I can easily change the settings of the two screens separately. Basically, when I right click on a moniter screen, I can change the setting only for that monitor. But with the 2010.0 version, I couldn't do that anymore.
On this PC, I mainly use Windows. Running Linux is just for fun, no practical use. Compare the two system, Mandriva still has some catch up to do. With Windows, I can drag a window, moving from one screen to the other, with Mandriva, I can't. In Mandriva, the window opened on one screen can only stay on that screen. This is not convenient, and it has been like this since I first tied Mandriva two years ago. Really hoped that they can make some improvement. Although, Mandriva 2010.0 doesn't work as well as Windows XP, it is the only Linux that can automatically detect and use both screens. It worked, but it is far from being a Windows killer.
145 • Not their best release (by Fernie on 2009-11-10 04:44:04 GMT from United States)
I have to agree with those having problems. I have had my problems with the video. I could not get Compiz working very well. I also struggled briefly with dual monitors. The video response after installing Nvidia drivers was horrible. So I just went back to plain Ubuntu and it worked better. Still, it is not my main distro. For that I rely on Linux Mint 7 which never fails. I am really disappointed at how it has behaved on my system, which with a 2.2 ghz dual core Intel and 4 gigs of RAM should be able to handle most of what Linux can throw at it.
I am however looking forward to the Opensuse release. I have been using the RC and it has worked without a flaw. No Nvidia drivers for it though, thus no dual monitors, but they promise that they will release a driver with the new distro. I am also looking forward to the new Linux Mint which hopefully will not be as buggy as Karmic.
Karmic has lots of potential, but it is not yet ready for prime time. This feels like a Linux version of Vista, well on second thought, its not that bad, but you get my drift. What makes it so bad is that the expectations were so high. Where there is smoke there is fire and I don' t think the Ubuntu community would try and sabotage this release. Karmic has problems and it should not have been released into the wild without a bit more care and feeding. Hopefully it can fend off all the lions that are looking to kill it.
Ubuntu has always been a very fine distro and the Ubuntu developers can probably fix most of what ails it up to now. The lesson here is that when you give it such a build up the glare of the lights will show every blemish. I will give it another go in a couple of week and post again.
146 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Brian McCullough on 2009-11-10 05:10:19 GMT from United States)
I had a few issues on my laptop, but those were pretty clearly the fault of the hardware. The only issue I've found that I'd lay at Ubuntu's feet is that in 9.10, the audio hardware initializes before playing each sound and powers down shortly afterward. The intent is to save power, which isn't a bad idea. However, many PC sound chipsets (including the ones on both of my computers) are noisy when they start up and shut down, and the repeated speaker pops get irritating. Fortunately, there is an easy fix posted in the forums.
More disturbing to me is the tone taken in this thread (including the article that kicked it off). I started with 7.10, and I remember having to spend a great deal of time at the command line just to get the live CD to boot, as well as to get things running afterward. I've personally experienced continuous progress since then, speed bumps notwithstanding. It's just part of the evolution of the desktop experience, be that Ubuntu or Mandriva or Fedora or whatever else. Canonical does need to straighten some things out, but that's no cause to take potshots at them.
By the way ... the worst upgrade story I've heard has to do with the users who suddenly lost ALL of their personal data and configuration info. And that "distro" would be Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" ...
147 • Karmic Upgrade has been smooth as silk !!!! (by Richard on 2009-11-10 05:58:41 GMT from Australia)
Three machines here with Karmic running just wonderfully not one single issue at all. So I don't understand all the commentary on Karmic being so bad.
148 • Mandriva (by Al on 2009-11-10 06:30:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yes, agreed about Mandriva. I was always a fan of Mandrake until the dark days of 10.0, when it got to be too unpredictable to be recommended. However recently I put in 2009 for a couple of people, and it is as you report, it just goes in and works. The control centre is indeed a great help to new users, it makes everything easy. I also agree that it is relatively heavy as a distro. This is not what you put in on an old 1.5Ghz Celeron with 512Mb memory. Its good to hear that the latest one is continuing the quality improvement.
An alternative to consider is PCLinux. I do like KDE 4 in the latest releases by the way, but for new users, Gnome is going to be an easier adjustment.
149 • @80 (Caitlyn Martin) (by jake on 2009-11-10 07:23:59 GMT from United States)
"As I've said many times in the past sucess (or lack thereof) with any given distro depends very much on the hardware being used. Almost any Linux distro can be made to work with any supported hardware. The question is how much work will it take and how many fixes/workarounds will you have to go through to get it all working the way it should."
Wrong attitude. It doesn't work that way in RealLife(tm). I've tried *buntu, and I'm not impressed. Shovel-ware isn't a recipe for a stable computing platform.
You are better off selecting hardware that works with whatever OS and software you running. Seriously, from time immemorial, it has always been a good idea to purchase hardware that actually runs the software which (for whatever reason) you need to run.
Me, I've been running Slackware from year dot. It works. Because I bought the hardware that I need to run Slackware.
*buntu tries to be everything, to everybody. As a result, it is is just as bloated and buggy as Vista SP2 (or Win 7, if you prefer).
Think about it.
150 • I made up my mind (by andk on 2009-11-10 07:31:59 GMT from Denmark)
After going back and forth i finally decided to only use KDE4 from now on...
The question was more which distro should i use and after A LOT of testing different distros and having my own list of things that i want and need i finally narrowed it down to pardus and opensuse as the best implementations of KDE4...
Soon openSUSE gets here with the 11.2 release and im looking forward to test it until the new pardus comes out, will finally make up my mind then. On a side note i thought mandriva was a really poor release, from their software selection to annoying little bugs and bad font rendering
151 • re:101 (by Rac Shade on 2009-11-10 08:22:41 GMT from Italy)
Zenix OS is very interesting and light !
Works well on my Compaq NX 6310 laptop.
Thanx !
152 • Fixed vs Rolling (by megadriver on 2009-11-10 08:49:12 GMT from Spain)
A lot of the "upgrade woes" could be avoided if more distros adopted the "rolling release" model.
Suddenly a ton of changes and new features (and a number of new bugs and breakages that can overwhelm many people) every 6 months/a year/whatever vs. Small gradual changes and new features introduced gradually as they appear (and problems that can be tackled as they appear, too, one by one).
Reinstall every 6 months/a year/whatever (or risk a version upgrade that may or may not work, and the end result is never as "clean" as a new install, how Windows-like) vs. Install once and be up-to-date instantly (instead of having to download 300 MB of updates just after installing because it's four months since the official release, and two months later you'll probably have to reinstall).
Waiting many months for the perfectly working, new and improved version of your favourite software (say, Firefox 3.5, Ubuntu/Debian Stable users?) vs. Getting it mere days (or even hours) after it's been released.
The "new OS version every x time, you should reinstall from zero every x time to get a current, clean system" model is a holdover from the commercial OSes (no wonder all the "commercial" distros use it).
Yes, I know some of you have been upgrading your Ubuntu versions since 2005 without a hitch, and I think that's very cool, really! But how much more your "lucky streak" is going to last? Some people's ended with 9.10, it seems.
153 • An active Ubuntu testing community (by jdetras on 2009-11-10 09:05:45 GMT from Philippines)
It is about time to be realized by ALL Ubuntu users that testing is important to release a quality product. Unless the community and real Ubuntu users get to test the release prior to the final release product, such bugs and issues will come. I commented on this: http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/ubuntu-karmic-review/#comment-4013.
->I agree with that. I also realized that when I read in an article wherein Windows 7 got around 8 million beta testers who actually downloaded and used it for testing Windows 7. I am guilty of not being one of the testers, but I am happy that I did not find any issue when I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my HP 2140. I guess the community should really take part and be pro-active in helping Ubuntu’s quality by testing it prior to the final release. Then, there will be less of bugs and issues at release time. Good timing to realize this for the next release, which we all know will be an LTS, Ubuntu 10.04. I am eagerly excited for this and I’ll do my part in testing it as a benefited user of Ubuntu since 8.04.
154 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-10 10:15:25 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #134.
Of COURSE they "should" work straight out of the box, CM!
(It's a complete and utter waste of everyone's time to develop some distro that can only ever work on a dev's particular machine and his/her mates, UNLESS you do it purely for the hobbyist's satisfaction.)
A distro or any OS should "just work" ,without the skills and constant attentions of someone such as yourself to keep running. ( There again that is how you earn your crust, lol.)
It's what is known, in UK anyway, as being "fit-for-purpose". Folk can reject stuff they bought and get a refund (granted, not the best comparison with free stuff!) should an article (inc software) not perform as advertised, or be of duff quality.
How many distros do you know of where the devs issue a warning such as "may not work on your hardware config'", or, "may need several (lots) sessions on an online forum to set up OS properly". And, if you can't get online...to sort out your wireless card drivers, say...
Across the planet there might only be a few million "nerdy types" (non perjorative btw) who get into any OS at terminal level, but rather more who can't, won't or don't.
Speaking from personal experience I have had no probs with Uxx since U7 (when I first used GNULinux stuff, from freebie in a mag). And that's over six different machines.
We both know why that is...'cos Canonical work very hard to make sure their product is as user friendly as possible...they don't set out their stall and declare for all the world to see that the Us and clones are for experienced users only and a degree in the Computer Sciences an advantage.
Indeed, it might be useful for the smaller one man and his wolf type distros to be classified as purely hobbyist on the grounds they may not be supported for any number of reasons. That way, unless you had the time to spend, you could pass it by and try another, perhaps better designed distro.
Sometimes I feel that folk forget DW is NOT purely for hobbyist folk otherwise LB would not include copy about "national" distros from over the entire planet...now that would be interesting to know if such distros had any probs running straight out of the box.
155 • ubuntu mandriva and x (by ritch on 2009-11-10 10:33:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
tried one last futile attempt to get ubuntu on my hardware last night! still no joy!
a real shame since in live mode it looks like the best unbutu yet!
(and could have been a real challenge to my mandriva install that i always have and have tryed to move away from, but always come back to, because its rock solid and dependable..... not saying its always good but even when its less than it should be, ive found i can work round it or fix whats broken.. nothing ever been a show stopper a few anoying minor bugs over the years but never anything major )
as usual i've just gone back to mandriva because of show stopping bugs with another distro
guess the problem is a bug with the newer implementation of grub2 and ext4.... with the unbuntu installer system on my hardware..
real shame since i want to use studio since im a musician 8.10 was ok
but since then its just not worked was a problem with x with an ati cards in 9.04
updating seamed to foul the system and after an automatic update had a brown unbutu screen pop up and a lot not working
looks like same problem with x in 9.10 with the added bug with grub
unbuntu please get a vesa mode or drop me to a command line so i can at least configure x on ati card im not even getting the launch menu displayed never mind the desktop
goes from the asus display straight to black, not good.. hope its better with 4 and 5 series cards since im about to buy a 5 series ati and will cross my finger for a display.
and we want to convince window's users too switch to linux, not going to happen!!!
while most distros are as broken as this, default to a basic vesa mode if x fails...
then someone with no command line knowledge can fix the problem..
i can start mandriva and mepis (their probably a few others) in a basic vesa mode
solves a lot of head aches, mepis is the best distro out for that their is always a mode to get some kind of display up...
i can use the terminal, but i know if i give a linux distro to a non linux user and that happens their going to put the cd in the bin and curse linux as crap..
when we all know it isn't...
had to go back to 64studio but thats old and hasn't been updated in a very long while
a very poor beta came out about a year ago and then nothing.....
anyone know if its dead ?
think it must be, which would be a real shame, know the web sites still there and there servers are still running, downloaded and burned an new copy only a few weeks ago
so installed mandriva 2010 which is rock solid as always feels like nothing has really changed since 2009 but ive put it on an older machine a 2.8ghz p4 and a ati 3650 on that machine it feels a bit sluggish on that!
which it shouldn't be on that hardware i know its a single core chip but its should be more than fast enough, so hoping its corrected in an update to the ati driver
156 • Unbuntu! (by yaga on 2009-11-10 11:49:57 GMT from Sweden)
Every time I decide to take a new ubuntu release out for a spin, I end up with a sense of tremendous gratitude ... towards Debian GNU/Linux!
157 • @ Ritch (by Untitled on 2009-11-10 12:02:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm using Karmic on two systems with ATI graphics and it's working on both. One of them is still supported by ATI so I'm using the fglrx driver, the other isn't, so it's using the open source radeon driver. I think it's strange that you can't get it to run on three different computers. Have you tried to re-burn the ISO to a new CD and check it?
My only problem, with ATI card that is not supported anymore (FireMV 2250) is that it's an AGP card which has a slight problem with the open source drivers as there are artefact on some icons and other things which annoy me. There's a workaround for it but it makes the whole system less responsive which is even more annoying. This is not only affecting Ubuntu as it happens in other distributions as well (although it doesn't happen in Debian Testing).
Now my question: can anyone recommend a graphic card that is:
1. Still supported with good Linux support.
2. Not expensive.
3. Can drive two (preferably DVI) screens.
4. Not a gamer, but I like KDE compositing effects, so something that can make it work.
Thanks.
158 • karmic (by bz on 2009-11-10 12:14:41 GMT from United States)
Wow! what a ride. i've been running karmic since alpha 1 and i think it's the
best yet.
159 • #152 "megadriver" (by Sean on 2009-11-10 12:25:10 GMT from United States)
"A lot of the "upgrade woes" could be avoided if more distros adopted the "rolling release" model."
Man do we agree with that! We had thought we'd found *the solution* for our newer machines here with Sabayon. Ran it for over 4 months with no hitches and very easy learning curve for new users.
Then came the last "upgrade." Boom! Would not boot on 4 different boxes, all modern chip sets and hardware. Got it to boot on one of the machines.. an on (won't post here the details, too angry).
My coworker and colleague Joy left a post here the other day about our choices after that experience. All I can add to what she said is that it is a VERY good idea to go to the forums of the distro you want to try BEFORE installing, and even before downloading and burning a live CD or DVD.
Look in there at the problems as posted and most importantly, as RESPONDED to by administrators and long time users of the distribution.
Look long and thoroughly at any threads about problems with upgrades and updates. Picture yourself going through what the members there are posting about. ;)
160 • Ubuntu/UNR 9.10 (by MIchael Fox on 2009-11-10 12:29:56 GMT from Canada)
My experience with Ubuntu 9.10 has been mostly positive. I installed in VMware Fusion and VirtualBox virtual machines on three Macs without incident. I had a minor problem with audio in the playing of mp3/4's (slow playing) in some of the pre-release versions that required me to disable pulseaudio. I think all of that was fixed in the final release, but I may have had to disable pulseaudio in one of the virtual machines.
The new Ubuntu Netbook Remix is a work of art (at least when you change the desktop wallpaper). The interface design is an improvement over the previous version, which wasn't bad either. The new scrollbars on the Desktop work better than the old, and the icons are larger and sharper. Like vanilla Ubuntu, the startup sequence is faster than 9.04 and the startup graphics are a work of art.
The one problem I'm having with UNR is specific to MSI Wind netbooks, and involves a flickering video adjustment bar that comes on automatically. One of the fixes, disabling webcam at startup, restricts the annoying effect on my U100 to a few seconds at startup. Not a deal breaker at all, and hopefully a fix will arrive soon.
161 • #152 Rolling distros (by Xtyn on 2009-11-10 12:37:22 GMT from Romania)
Some people (for example people who have a life) like things to just work.
If there are regressions in your rolling distro (Arch), what do you do? How do you go back to a system that worked? As far as I know, some Arch users ended up with broken systems after upgrades, some with regressions etc.
The only rolling distros I know are: Debian testing and unstable, Arch and PCLinuxOS, although in PCLOS it doesn't work very well (see PCLOS 2007 to 2009).
I had Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu 9.04, it was easy, there was a launchpad repository for it. Debian can be a mixed system (stable-testing-unstable). I had Firefox 3.5 in Debian stable. I just told it to use the unstable repo for it. Compiling is another way you can do it.
Some people like CentOS, Ubuntu LTS or Debian stable just because they have better things to do with their time and are not interested in bleeding edge.
162 • Re134 - Ubuntu should Just Work (by Michael Bæk on 2009-11-10 13:10:50 GMT from Denmark)
@Caitlyn:
I don't agree. Canonical markets Ubuntu as a linux os for the masses, a beginner friendly MS-Windows like os. This may be unrealistic but if it's what users expect from Ubuntu they have to deliver*. As of now there are just too many failed installs for Ubuntu to succeed.
If a new release doesn't decrease the number of install errors whats the point?
*) A small margin of install errors is unavoidable and understandable.
163 • strategy for safe upgrades (by Michael Fox on 2009-11-10 13:28:19 GMT from Canada)
A follow-up to my post #161 - I'm always concerned with the potential of a new version to break something and as a result, I don't upgrade a working Ubuntu version on any computer until I know the new one works. My strategy for my netbook is to always have an extra partition handy for installing and trying out the new version. (This seems more important than ever, given the number of comments from users who had 9.10 working in live mode but had problems when it was actually installed on their HD.) For me, the extra partition on my Wind was available by erasing a partition with UNR 8.10. Trying UNR 9.10 in that way is entirely risk-free. Doesn't work? - erase it and wait for a .01 version; I still have a perfectly working UNR 9.04 in my disk. In fact, the 9.04 is still there and will remain until the flickering brightness bar is totally fixed. Meanwhile, I have copied over my Wine folder and other essential files onto the 9.10 so that when I'm satisfied that everything works, 9.04 can be erased.
The only problem I had with this strategy this time was that UNR 9.10 installed grub2 instead of grub onto the MBR. Grub2 did pick up the other OSes on the disk, but it made a mess of my startup menu by bringing over every old kernel still on 9.04. I was able to eliminate that problem by wiping those old kernels (didn't know they were still there) and updating grub2, but now I have some learning to do to customize the grub2 startup menu to be the way I want it.
I should also mention that I have a P4 PC in my lab running Ubuntu 9.04 that is actively used by two people. I won't risk messing with something another person is using by updating that installation until 9.10.01 is released.
164 • A bit disappointed with Mandriva 2010.0 (by fuherb on 2009-11-10 13:29:52 GMT from Hong Kong)
I just installed Mandriva 2010.0, and to be frank, I am a bit disappointed. 2009.1 was an excellent distro so I did have a high expectation on 2010.0.
Issues are there are some not so minor bugs, which should not appear in a freshly distro.
a. rpmdrake can only install packages once, then it will fail to install the next set. You need to exit rpmdrake and restart rpmdrake again. Happens when you use ftp repository (most people will face this issue).
b. when you open your /home/xxx directory, you will not see your sub-directories. It took me a while to figure out from the errata list that I need to remove gvfs-fuse. How come this is not solved before releasing the final version? I think all users must see this issue.
c. I have a rather old 54M USB Wi-Fi stick based on the RT2570 drivers. It worked perfectly with 2009.1. It also worked with 2010.1, but the speed became horrible. I need to switch to a RT73 based stick to improve connection speed. Not sure if there are changes in the kernel or other issues that cause this.
I understand that some bugs are difficult to avoid. But those bugs which can affect almost all users should not exist. Hence I am a bit disappointed with the Quality control.
165 • Linux XP (by walter dunn on 2009-11-10 14:03:37 GMT from United States)
I am surprised that you allow things like this. If you try to download the torrent, it asks for a password. There is no explanation of this. Very poor public relations! State up front that it is commercial, or restricted, etc.
166 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-11-10 14:06:32 GMT from United States)
there is a poll running in the ubuntu forums:
Upgrade - worked flawlessly 540 17.83%
Upgrade - worked but had few things to fix, nothing serious though 591 19.51%
Upgrade - got many problems that i've not been able to solve 523 17.27%
Install - worked flawlessly 488 16.11%
Install - worked but had few things to fix, nothing serious though 387 12.78%
Install - got many problems that i've not been able to solve 500 16.51%
so it seems that roughly one-third of both upgraders and clean installers are having "many problems"
[glass one-third empty]
167 • re #166 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-10 14:09:27 GMT from United States)
looking at similar polls for previous incarnations, it seems that one-third unhappiness is not unusual for ubuntu
except for intrepid ibex, which was worse [though with a much smaller sample]
168 • follow up to my post #66; (by Robert I. Baker on 2009-11-10 14:19:48 GMT from United States)
A quick update to my comments back in post #66: I have the ancient 3DFX "Voodoo" working at 1024 x 768 now. All I had to do was go into the mobo BIOS setup and make the video BIOS "catchable".
Also the provided sound recorder applet did not work on my old box, but I found "QArecord" in the software center and installed same. Works well, Problem solved!
And, I made a comment that I had "erased" my hard drive beforw installing, What I meant is that I used the partition manager to remove all partitions before installing 9.04 locally and 9.10 by net.
I'm continuing to enjoy having this old beast of a box as usable again!
169 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by M H Bell on 2009-11-10 14:45:41 GMT from United States)
My clean Install of Ubuntu 9.10 for AMD64 went without a hitch. It was flawless except for adding other distros to the new grub2. Which I was not familiar with. After a little reading everything was fine. Ubuntu is working just fine for me and is trouble free. It is now my main OS.
M H
170 • Switched back to Linuxmint 7 (by Mark on 2009-11-10 15:21:31 GMT from Philippines)
I was using Ubuntu 9.10 for a couple of days and then suddenly I get a "mount of filesystem failed" error.
I did not know how to fix it. It also appears when I used the Kubuntu 9.10. Same errors.
I just decided to switch to Linuxmint 7. Everything works fine as it should... without stressing the end-user.
Tried Mandriva One 2010 too... found it sluggish as compared to Kubuntu 9.10.
Will wait for the experts to find a fix to these errors. I love Kubuntu though.
171 • eeeBuntu (by KevinC on 2009-11-10 15:54:25 GMT from United States)
One of the best distros I've ran on my picky netbook (Asus 1002HA), is eeeBuntu 3.0 (I like the base edition). I've recently noted that it will no long be based on an Ubuntu core:
http://forum.eeebuntu.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=4492
Guess they'll havta come up w/ a new name... ;>)
One can only hope that it's better than "Easy Peasy," perhaps the all time worst moniker change in history, IMHO.
172 • Karmic (by Graham Hind on 2009-11-10 16:53:12 GMT from Kenya)
Karmic is living up to its publicity on start-up and (particularly) shut down and most things have gone smoothly, but its handling of Samba is a disaster here. Connecting to the server is troublesome and unreliable and in no way matches the reliability of 9.04. Surely something as big as this should have been noticed in testing?
173 • KNetworkManager (by Michael Raugh on 2009-11-10 17:01:35 GMT from United States)
When I upgraded my Dellbuntu from Hardy to Jaunty one of the things that I noticed right away was the reworked KNetworkManager. It struck me as pretty and fully functional, much like the rest of KDE4, and I've had no trouble using it to switch between wired and wireless networks wherever I go. It's a nice piece of work.
On an unrelated note, to those who read these comments and assert that DWW is biased for or against a particular distro because of what they read here: this comment section is a public forum, folks. Anyone can and will comment here, including those with an axe to grind or a pet distro to promote, but each commenter speaks for him/herself, not for Ladislav or his DWW staff. So if one week's comments seem to be Ubunbu-bashing or Ubuntu-loving it's because the Ubuntu-bashers/lovers are commenting, not because DistroWatch hates/loves/is getting paid off by Ubuntu.
And on distros that "just work": Linux works perfectly out of the box every time I buy a machine with Linux preinstalled. Funny how that works, isn't it? ;^)
-mr
174 • Some responses (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-10 17:23:26 GMT from United States)
#149: Jake, you might call my attitude "wrong" but the comments clearly show that people do want to install their OS of choice on whatever software they have. IME that is real life and, most of the time, it does work that way. Again, the fact that Ubuntu and Mandriva do install correctly on most hardware for the vast majority of people says something very positive about Linux developers.
Having said that, you do make one very valid point. The best way for a new Linux user to get an easy to use, hassle free Linux system is to buy a system new with Linux preloaded. In that sense Linux is no different from Windows or MacOS.
#154: Forest, the fact is that IME no OS "just works" all of the time. If you create the first OS that does you'll make a lot of money :) I haven't found anything that is consistently better than Linux for a bare metal install. Linux hardware detection, with all of its problems, is top notch when compared to Windows. The difference is that most end users don't ever install Windows and do install Linux so the expectations are different. In my view those expectations are unrealistic.
Jake (#149) does make one excellent point. If you buy preloaded you should expect the same sort of results, or actually better results, that Windows delivers preloaded. IMNSHO Ubuntu meets that goal. Preloaded Ubuntu, Madriva and SUSE all do and don't need special expertise to run.
Oh, and for the record, I don't have a degree in Computer Science. I'm probably older than most here and my university didn't even offer an undergraduate CS degree at the time, only a graduate program. I had a CS minor and did take some of the grad classes as an undergrad. I never went on to graduate school because a company threw what seemed like a huge amount of money at me to come work for them.
#162: Michael: Installing an OS (any OS) is not for the masses. Most DW readers are, by the very nature of this site, way more technically inclined than the average Joe or Jane Sixpack user. Ubuntu does succeed as Linux for the masses only when preinstalled.
175 • Ubuntu media coverage (by efsc70 on 2009-11-10 17:35:53 GMT from Mexico)
I don't think this is the worst ubuntu ever, for me Ubuntu 8.10 has been the worst of all. I've been testing and using Karmic since alpha 6. Since alpha 6 there were known issues with some graphic cards, hard drives and filesystems, but in my case there weren't some serious issues. The only drawbacks found were removable media support (cd's, dvd's and usb media) because is necessary to unmount and/or select remove media (hardware buttons just remove media and is needed to unmount the media).
176 • Ubuntu on Probation for Me (by Dave on 2009-11-10 18:22:19 GMT from Canada)
I've been a longtime user and advocate of Ubuntu since Dapper Drake, Ubuntu was *the* linux I would recommend to anyone. That is no longer the case. I agree with others who have sensed a downward spiral in "just working" since 8.04, roughly.
I've been using 9.10 since beta, upgrading my 9.04:
- upgrades would disable/enable detection of my media player
- Rhythmbox would fail to detect audio CD's
- my fstab mounts were broken during the upgrade.
and once it hit official release
- installing Banshee resulted in an application that worked great at first, but eventually stopped launching with no apparent error messages (including from terminal, or in system logs).
Installed UNR 9.10 on my EeePC. Wanted to install it to an SD card or USB drive first to test it (as I was now cautious).
- when the UNR installer hit the partitioner page, it would lock up hard if I had an SD card or USB drive attached to the netbook
- my bug reports would be misassigned to other bugs despite my explicit differentiation in the description, and then ignored. repeatedly.
Decided to scrap my Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04, and re-install fresh from CD
- Neither LiveCD session or installer would display, with no clear errors in Ctrl-Alt-F1 or F8. Random presses of [enter] did move me through the screens (as evidenced by messages in Ctrl-Alt-F1 and F8) all the way to the partitioner. Luckily not too far.
- had to use the "safe default" install.
And, the ubuntu install partitioner (which I've never liked) still misreports what the "after" system will look like, and fails to distinguish free space after your physical partitions from free space in your extended partition.
I intend to keep using these installs on my main client PC and netbook, as I'm familiar with Ubuntu. But I can't recommend Ubuntu any more. And I'm actively looking for a replacement.
Dave
177 • antiX-M8.5 ready for testing. (by anticapitalista on 2009-11-10 18:30:56 GMT from Greece)
If you want to beta test the latest antiX, see here for the announcement.
http://antix.freeforums.org/antix-m8-5-full-test1-and-antix-m8-5-base-test1-available-t2046.html
Comments at the antiX forum will be appreciated.
TIA.
178 • RE: 162. You have no proof at all. (by Eddie Wilson on 2009-11-10 18:39:38 GMT from United States)
"Canonical markets Ubuntu as a linux os for the masses, a beginner friendly MS-Windows like os. This may be unrealistic but if it's what users expect from Ubuntu they have to deliver*. As of now there are just too many failed installs for Ubuntu to succeed."
No there's not. There is no proof unless you believe a lot of the unprovable post you read. Quite a few of the post, if you take them and dissect them, doesn't make a lot of sense. You hear, "It won't boot", "It freezes up", and I've even read, "It won't run my Windows games". Never any details, just people saying, "Its the worst one yet". You don;'t know how many installs have failed, or for that matter, how many have succeeded. All you know is what you read in the forums and comments and I'm sure some are from the Microsoft fan-boys, the Mac fan-boys, and the old school Linux/BSD fan-boys. I wonder how many of them there are. It looks like a lot to me.
This is not to say that people don't have some problems because I'm sure they do but we don't know how many. It also seems that a lot of people take pleasure when people have problems with Ubuntu. Do you think that Debian wants Ubuntu to fail? Do you think that Madriva, Fedora, or even openSuse wants Ubuntu to fail? Of course not. That wouldn't mean the end of them but I believe it would mean the end of Linux on the desktop for the general public. But maybe that's what some of you want. Think about it.
179 • @109 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-11-10 19:04:02 GMT from Canada)
"If we take 9.04 for example, many owners of PCs and Laptops with ATI graphics (me included on one manchine) found out that their card was given the legacy status by ATI and don't work with the proprietary drivers anymore. There wasn't much that Ubuntu can do about it except of not keeping back xorg, which wouldn't work for how long."
Well, they could have realized that relying on proprietary software over which you have no control to provide decent graphics support for your users is a poor idea, and instead of doing that, committed to developing the free drivers, and hired multiple people to work full time on them.
Like those other companies do. One's name rhymes with Bovell and the other with Said Bat. It's on the tip of my tongue, it'll come to me soon...:)
180 • @112 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-11-10 19:09:38 GMT from Canada)
"Adam Williamson: "Fedora 12 should be one of the highest quality Fedora releases for a while.
That is a funny statement. Does this mean that we can expect Fedora 13 (and 14, 15, 16) to be worse than Fedora 12?"
Er, heh, no, I meant 'for a while' retrospectively. As in it'll be better than all that crap we released before ;)
181 • Karmic has some issues (by PaulS on 2009-11-10 19:15:38 GMT from United States)
I have been working with various linux versions for a couple of years and in many areas they have gotten much better during that time but Karmic has some rather difficult new issues. I tried an upgrade on one machine and a clean install on another and on both wound up with no usable graphics on the first boot.I have managed to get both functioning at some level but that is a huge step back from 9.04 where the graphics worked with out any issue. The problem for many people probably belongs with the new xserver which doesn't really appear to be ready for release.
182 • re 178 & 179 (by corneliu on 2009-11-10 19:29:24 GMT from Canada)
Eddie Wilson wrote: Do you think that Madriva, Fedora, or even openSuse wants Ubuntu to fail? Of course not. That wouldn't mean the end of them but I believe it would mean the end of Linux on the desktop for the general public.
Really? Wow!
IMHO there are lots of good Linux desktops, some of them even better than Ubuntu. Some people say that Ubuntu is hurting the Linux desktop because it is buggy. I am not sure about that but I hate the idea that Ubuntu is THE Linux desktop. I don't think it is fair because I don't think Ubuntu is the best Linux desktop. Anyway, don't worry, if Ubuntu fails, Linux desktop will definitely survive, maybe it'll get even stronger.
Adam Williamson wrote: Well, they could have realized that relying on proprietary software over which you have no control to provide decent graphics support for your users is a poor idea, and instead of doing that, committed to developing the free drivers, and hired multiple people to work full time on them.
When all the funds go to marketing is there anything left for fixing bugs and contributing upstream?
183 • @ Adam Williamson (by Untitled on 2009-11-10 20:00:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
Let me know when it comes to you :)
Your criticism, as subtle as it may be, is justified, but I guess I'm more forgiving. To me it's the same as the difference between a developer and a user like me. A developer will always be able to contribute more than me but I try to do the best I can (bug reports, donations to my favourite projects, paying for a Mandriva subscription without using it...). Perhaps Mark Shuttleworth could have done more than he does, but I don't think they only take and don't give back, maybe just not enough for everybody to agree that it's enough. One thing that comes to mind is Upstart. I think that Fedora uses upstart (please correct me if I'm wrong).
Anyway, I promise to give Fedora a go when I have some more time for it. I warn you, I have high expectations from it and it's your fault.
184 • Karmic is NOT broken (In Summary) (by Leo on 2009-11-10 20:26:26 GMT from United States)
So, if anyone takes the trouble of going through the first 160 posts, you'll see:
* a vast majority of positive experiences with Karmic
* some people having problems (as usual, and I really concur with Caitlyn @134)
* several people explaining _why_ Ubuntu is "broken", which contradicts the previous too observations.
Sure, Ubuntu has some issues, and it can be improved, and it will be improved, based on previous experiences.
Nothing to see here, let's not feed the trolls!
By the way, why this anxiety to insult other distros? I used to use Mandrake, then Mandriva, and I have nothing but appreciation and great recollections of that time. They had features that even today I am missing in Kubuntu (easy pick up of an existing home partition upon installation, a display of all your hardware in the control panel from where you could configure different devices, graphical fstab editor, etc.) Sure, overall, I preferred to use something else, but doesn't make my previous choice, and sure enough many other people's current choice, a terrible choice or anything like that. Let's all grow up and peace out!
185 • @161 Rolling releases (by Anonymous on 2009-11-10 20:28:27 GMT from Finland)
Foresight does also have rolling release model. In addition, its package manager (Conary) allows rollback to an earlier state, which should be useful if something goes to poor shape with the newest update. (I don't have any personal experience with Foresight, however).
186 • UBUNTU 9.10 (by Josh on 2009-11-10 20:49:08 GMT from United States)
I did fresh installs on an eee 900a (UNR) and an HP amd64 laptop and have experienced no problems. I was actually more disappointed with 9.04 than I was with 9.10.
187 • Mandriva vs Kubuntu for a begginner (by haitechan on 2009-11-10 20:58:45 GMT from Peru)
Hi, first of all I've been following DW since my initial Linux testing with Ubuntu 7.10 because of a HDD failure that messed up my XP install (long story made short: I wiped my HDD and installed Ubuntu ^^).
Anyway, a few days ago I dowloaded the latest versions of both Kubuntu and Mandriva for a friend that sort of became interested in Linux. I know KDE implementation of Kubuntu is not that newbie friendly but she insisted to try "the one that looks like Vista" (don't kill her please!) and not Ubuntu. I'm used to GNOME and I know that you can it make sort of like Vista (or OSX or whatever) but she still wanted to try Kubuntu. I teached her a few basic things (how to boot, some basic usage of the desktop, etc) and then handed her one copy. Yesterday, she was pretty dissapointed because her wireless device (a Broadcom card) wasn't detected. Also she did not find it that easy to use, even though she is not a newbie with computers. I managed to convince her to give Mandriva a try. Even with the wireless issue she told me not only it was "prettier" but also much simpler to use.
I'm by no means a Ubuntu hater neither a fangirl, But I believe that making a desktop easy to use is a must for appealing to beginners and Mandriva in this case delivers better than Kubuntu, at least in KDE. I'm going to dowload the GNOME version to test it against Ubuntu so I can make a final statement but I must say I was really impressed with Mandriva. Congratulations to the team!
PD: Sorry for the English, it's not my native language ^^.
188 • I created (by Michel de Souza on 2009-11-10 22:20:35 GMT from Brazil)
I created a channel on FreeNode of Distrowatch -
#Distrowatch
189 • Rolling release distros (by Antony on 2009-11-10 22:35:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
sidux is rolling, of course.
190 • "Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala"??? (by giuseppe mongiovi on 2009-11-10 22:42:34 GMT from Italy)
it is a matter of being patient and tenacious and in the end ubuntu makes you a happy user. I'm running a fresh install of Karmic Koala on an aspire one a110l and i'm so glad about it, everithing is running at an amazing speed including google earth, stellarium, quake2 with wine, I was also able to get the microphone working in skype with blueman and a nokia bluetooth earphone. Linux requires you use your brain and teach you the beauty of sharing, of course ubuntu can be improved but the more time passes the more it gets better and better
191 • Mandriva on an Acer Aspire One (by TheBullDog on 2009-11-10 22:42:48 GMT from United States)
I installed Mandriva 2010.0 Powerpack on my Acer Aspire One, model AOA 110, 8GB SSD -- replacing Linpus Lite. I encountered a few problems that I was able to resolve after a few quick searches in Mandriva's forums. Wireless works fine, and the netbooks Fn keys functionally normally. Mandriva definately did their homework to make this a netbook friendly release.
At the moment, I only have one outstanding issue. The problem: the system cannot mount my SD cards after the netbook comes out of suspend. The temporary fix: Open a terminal, use SU to get root access, and type the following command: "service haldaemon restart". The problem has been reported to Mandriva and I'll patiently await their permanent fix.
With Mandriva 2010.0 I'm able to use my Acer as an ebook reader. I know I can use Adobe Acrobat Reader to rotate PDFs so I can read a full page at a time. Very convenient. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that with online resources like Safari Books Online. Since I've installed Mandriva, I can now adjust the Acer's display to rotate it 90 degrees to the left; hit F11 to go full screen with my browser; then, go full screen with Safari Books Online's reader. I dim the display so the background isn't too bright (giving me a light gray background like I'd get with a commercial e-book reader). I hold the netbook like a regular book and turn the pages using the right arrow key. Very nice indeed, and it only takes seconds to set it up (and seconds to reset everything to normal when I'm done). If anyone knows of a good Linux app that can help me further repurpose this netbook as a good ebook reader platform, let me know.
192 • Kharmic problems (by Ray on 2009-11-10 23:09:03 GMT from United States)
I don't know why but on some computers when you try to upgrade Ubuntu, besides taking a long time, things get messed up. If you changed a lot of things to your liking and you don't want to redo them upgrade might be your only option. I usually only change the wallpaper, the themes and the icon set and keep my personal stuff on a home partition. So for Kharmic I downloaded the iso and replaced 9.04 completely and I haven't had any issues so far.
I admit that I switch between Debian Lenny ( it is very good), PCLinuxOS KDE4, and Ubuntu 9.10 (also very good).
Part of the problems people face may be due to the machine that they are using and the good thing about linux is that if a distro doesn't work well on your machine try another distro perhaps a Slackware or Gentoo based will work better on your machine.
193 • Re: #162 #152 Rolling distros (by DG on 2009-11-11 00:32:21 GMT from Netherlands)
A lot of the "upgrade woes" could be avoided if more distros adopted the "rolling release" model.
If only this were completely true, life would be so much simpler.
With a rolling release, you really need some way of recording a "snapshot" of the system after each update, so that in the event of problems you could roll back to a previously working snapshot. But this is equivalent to what the "release based" distros offer with each release, except that their "snapshot" is probably further in the past than you would like.
I work with Lunar Linux, which is a [source based] rolling distro. As long as you update regularly, and are no more than a few days behind the leading edge, you will find that you only need to update a few packages at a time. If one of these fails, it's easy to identify the cause, and with Lunar it is relatively easy to fall back to the previous source tarball, or report the problem on the #lunar irc channel and wait for someone to provide a workaround or an update. However, if you wait months between updates, or install from an ISO image that is months old, you run the risk that several key inter-dependent packages may need to be updated, and the order in which they need to be updated is significant if the overall update is to succeed.
Lunar's 1.6.4 ISO was released last Christmas, and some care is needed to update after installing the basic system (due to subsequent overlapping updates to gcc, glibc, readline, udev and others). See http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/lunar-dev/2009-September/006906.html
194 • reply to unintitiled (by ritch on 2009-11-11 01:24:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
to unentitled yes i have check the cd burn there fine! but its a long running problem... with unbuntu's with me.... and for it not working on 3 machines thats not that peculiar as the set ups are similar, ati card nvidia nforce drivers same make and model of hard drive's (maxtor) all three are similar priced amd boards mainly from asus ones a gigabyte..
all share similar components and are under the £50 mark
the only one unbutu displays on as usual is the computer with a nvidia card....why i don't know (just rember there was quite a bias against ati a while back, maybe that still is an issue) i burned 6 cd at the same time mandriva suse and 4 unbuntus studio xbuntu kubuntu and ubuntu it self, all of the ubuntus work as expected on nvidia but x is fouled with ati
put in old nvidia cards had hanging around a 6600 and a 5200 got my display up but with unbuntu's 9.10 failed at grub with instalation
mandriva and suse worked fine... unbuntu fails with x on ati cards on my set up with offical cd as well...
infact all distros have allways worked fine on my set up apart from most of the buntu family.. like i say mint works fine...and seams more robust so i will probly wait for that to come out..(mint has always seamed to me to be ubuntu with out the show stopping bugs)
either 7.10 or 8.04 suprised me (cant rember which one) and actually configured x correctly and suprised me ..and kept that unbutu on a machine for a while.
mandriva allways gives me a display suse always give me a display ubuntu never does on any of my ati card
i bought a 3650 when they came out hope the newer hardware may get round the problem, but this problem i only get from the odd debian and all mostly all buntu's nothing else not gentoo based suse mandriva or redhat.....just buntu and some debian.... really is it a more propietry bit of code not included in the debian tree for idilogical reason that is misconfiguring x (i don't know i just know it only happens with a certain lineage of linux distros)
i have no idea what the problem is with grub.....
all i can surmise that there is a bug between the new grub 2 and the new ext4 and only on hardware of a similar configuration to mine...and only in the buntus.. like a say mandriva and suse all install fine
(like i said the installer to me in ubuntu ive always love and felt was so dependable, i was completely suprised at the failure, first time its happened and ive been trying unbuntu since i think 4.04 and its been flawless until know)
i know its not any faliures of any kind other than buntus since i can test all other variables, got other linux distros to install and render a display first time..
no prob with x with rendering the basic graphics driver or the propietry one on mandriva
get my burner to test and verify the burn as a matter of course
test the my machines are all dual booted
i can fire up windows run a game play a flash file see if a web browser is scrolling smoothly
anything that might point to a fault
all cards work smoothly and as they should
thought maybe it the only pentium i have is a p4 and the rest is athlons maybe if i used a core 2 duo or a newer family of chips id be fine, but prob not, maybe its combining a nvida chipset with an ati graphics card...
i don't know......
but if anyone know what the reason is, i would love to know...
since id like to buy a new 5 series ati card and hopefully mate it with a compatable board and hardware so i can at last enjoy unbuntu like most off the comments here seam to indicate as a flawless experince
195 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Jim Anderson on 2009-11-11 01:55:54 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu 9.10 installed smoothly and has run flawlessly so far. It's the best distribution I've ever used.
196 • @183 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-11-11 03:41:03 GMT from Canada)
Yeah, Fedora uses upstart. That's definitely a good thing that's come out of Ubuntu. Can't resist pointing out that Mandriva wrote pinit months earlier, though, and that's been providing happily-parallelized yet transparently SysV-compatible startup on Mandriva for years before Ubuntu (or Fedora) have got around to it :)
197 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Toran Korshnah on 2009-11-11 05:44:07 GMT from Belgium)
Me too I have flickering screen 20 HP all the time. I thought it was my PC...So more people have it with the 9.10.
My webcam Microsoft Lifechat VX3000 was detected (procedure see help files Cheese), but was not working at all.
He was on /dev/video1, but I could nowhere select /dev/video1, especially not in Cheese.
TomTom Go started with Wine, but failed to detect my Go 630.
I'm waiting for Suse 11.2.
198 • @166 @167 - bad statistics (by AliasMarlowe on 2009-11-11 06:42:36 GMT from Sweden)
You did notice the boldface text in the first post in that ubuntuforums poll, didn't you?
"*** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll ***
Most of users voting here are users with issues.
Users with painless experience are not likely to come here."
The percentages you derived are of a self-selected nonrepresentative subset of Ubuntu users. It is explicitly skewed to represent those who had issues. The same is also true of the earlier polls at ubuntuforums on previous versions of Ubuntu.
It's difficult to get at adequate data for analysis of Ubuntu installations or issues (as I posted in #92).
199 • @ Ritch, 194 (by Untitled on 2009-11-11 08:09:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
My laptop has a Mobility Radeon HD 3650 and the only problem I have with it is that it's extremely slow when resizing windows using the proprietary driver when compositing is enabled. Maybe the problem is not with your ATI cards but with something else?
I don't know if Ubuntu has any problems with Athlon processors since I've never used one. My boyfriend's laptop has Athlon processor and he's warming up to the idea of running Linux, so if I end up installing it any time soon I'll report back.
In the meantime my advice would be to report a bug in Launchpad -- my guess is that they either already know what the problem is and can tell you or that they will want to find out as well.
200 • @ Adam Williamson, 196 (by Untitled on 2009-11-11 08:21:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
I didn't know about Mandriva and pinit, but then again I'm not very technical, but this is a good example of wasted resources in Linux -- distributions reinventing something that was already invented -- same thing with Ubuntu's xsplash now. I read their reasoning why they don't want to use Plymouth, and as I said, I'm not very technical but I think that if possible, it would be more beneficial if they would join forces working on Plymouth than make their own thing. And honestly, who could resist working on something called Plymouth.
But I'm not pointing the finger here at Canonical only. I think more people could try to cooperate than do their own thing and we'd all benefit from that.
Still, I'm not complaining. I think most distributions give you an amazing product and I'm still sometimes surprised that most of them (and the best of them) are giving it for free.
201 • @174 (Caitlyn Martin) (by jake on 2009-11-11 08:31:56 GMT from United States)
"you might call my attitude "wrong""
No, Caitlyn. I call the entire "ease of use" attitude wrong. It's a myth, and probably the biggest evil that any company has ever perpetrated on the general public (that's YOU, Apple!).
These boxes are increasingly complex from a hardware perspective, and so is the software that runs on them. The interactions between hardware and software (and wetwear!) compounds that complexity.
Expecting that complexity to make life easier by shoveling everything possible into Joe/Jane User's generic PC, in the hopes that it'll work, is, in my mind, foolhardy ... IF, that is, you are trying to promote FOSS and not your own agenda.
202 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-11 08:58:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #200
But how could you be expected to pay for something, that, by all accounts, may not work properly on your particular machine/config. "A" distro, so to speak, would need an enormous department just to do the refund thing, lol.
Distros are free 'cos they have to be. If you want to pay for support, owing to your being in business for example, then that is another issue entirely. Very few distros appear to have a "proper" financial base, Canonical or Red Hat say, with "proper" support depts.
The support generally come from the user forum(s) which may or may not be helpful in any given situation, and is of practically no value to a business user who needs a fix "now".
It would be a good idea to not double up on everything in different parallel universes...and it might also be a notion for the big boys to consider doing a bit more about advertising their wares on TV/radio...as in it's all very well to do ads online, but if prospective customers don't have machines and are not online anyway...and the idea of trundling around the High St on Saturday morning is not their cup of tea...or they are bedbound...
Here in UK we have a few ads for lappies but not once have I seen any reference to said lappie being installed with anything other than Windows or Mac of course.
There's always room for improvement, in all areas of a business, but as said above by me earlier, most distros are purely hobbyist, without long term "official" support...not, as I hasten to repeat, there's anything wrong in that but it is not really the way to promulgate GNULinux OS, is it?
Perhaps a closer examination of the way "computing" is conducted in other parts of the planet might be a useful excercise
203 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Owen Pimm on 2009-11-11 08:58:50 GMT from New Zealand)
Contrary to others comments, Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit just worked! It found everything and configured correctly. Everything works so nothing negative from me. Boot time seem faster (compared to 9.04) but not actually timed things. TV card, webcam, wireless network adapter, scanner and printer identified and operational without resort to the command line.
Thanks Ubuntu!
Owen
204 • untitiled (by ritch on 2009-11-11 10:15:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
ubuntu is know running fine on my laptop no problems of course the hardware is completely different apart from an ati x350 mobility graphics
but my amd based pc still has this grub error
i know the some of the instruction set on amd chip are slightyl different sse4a etc, but the amd chips fine and displays if their is a nvidia card in (its not the most cutting edge its a athlon 6000 3.2ghz) but it works with everything else
its definetly a few show stopping bugs that manifest it self with certain hardware combinations, i've notice a few have posted a similar problem with x and getting a blank display..
if i was to introduced my friend into the linux world the last thing i'd use for a demo would be ubuntu (unless i was absolutly sure it would work on his laptop)
ive had a heat management prob with this laptop and 8.04 and it would go for 2 mins then freeze..(not good! must have the cpu throtled like mad of course heat much more of an issue in a laptop and wouldn't have needed much of a % increase to bring it to a halt .. recent builds of it are fine)
instead id use mandriva one and possibly sabayon if your freind like them, then pull out ubuntu and keep your fingers crossed or hope ubuntu has a 9.10.1 in the next few weeks that address some the more show stopping bugs
think it is important to rember linux is doing a much harder task than windows in back engineering and supplying virtually all your drivers in a working form
we can't expect to go to asus's site and download the manufacturers drivers for each individual chipset and driver...for our mother board
the fact it works at all on such a dramaticly different set of potential hardware is pretty amazing in it self (windows dosen't provide the majority off its drivers for you)
windows aproach is fairly full proof gives you a basic graphic mode then you load in the specific drivers for all your hardware from the manufacture.
we will never have manufactures support for drivers, but we need to default to a vesa or safe graphics mode if x fails
im glad ive had positive responses! no idiots calling me a fan boy of mandriva
(i just use it because its a guarantted rock solid and dependable distro on my hardware)....
really i love what i see in the new ubuntu and since 64 studio is no longer that active i want ubuntu studio to replace it, just want ubuntu to get a handle on the common problem it seam's to have with x and ati based cards and this brand new prob with grub2 and ext4 (but like anything new its likely to have a few teething problems on some hardware, (i will log an error report)
205 • @ Forest, #202 (by Untitled on 2009-11-11 13:03:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't think I should be expected to pay but I like the Mandriva model: if it works for you you can say Thank You in the form of paying for a subscription. You don't get a lot in return if you compare it to the One (and free as in beer) edition, but I think people do it (I did it) to support Mandriva. It's different to a donation since Mandriva "tell" you what they consider a fair price, and then you consider whether you also think it's fair.
Since nobody asks me for my money I give it to KDE because I like what they're doing and I feel that this way I support their progress.
206 • @ Ritch, #204 (by Untitled on 2009-11-11 13:14:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hey Ritch, if I understand correctly you are able to run the liveCD on your machines and even install it, but it breaks when you try to run it for the first time. Is that right? Do you get any error messages or any clues, or is it just a black screen?
207 • Re: 184 Karmic is NOT broken (by UbuntuLovesYou on 2009-11-11 14:13:31 GMT from Australia)
I agree with Leo! Ubuntu runs without any problems on my lappie. Everything detected and working "out of the box". Performance is simply incredible.
Way to go Ubuntu. Better and better every release, without exception.
I don't understand why people insist that it's the fault of Ubuntu when the real problem is with their hardware, or more likely, their attitude. Give it up, haters!
Ubuntu is the one Linux to rule them all, IMHO.
208 • Karmic (by Anonymous on 2009-11-11 17:19:38 GMT from United States)
In response to Udo (comment 57, I believe) . . . I have had the same problem with the installation process hanging at different points, with a Live CD in my case. I am not so sure this isn't to do with my hardware as I have had no issues with Live CD installations or upgrades on other machines. The way I got around my installation issue is to use the Ubuntu server CD for a minimal install, then add "ubuntu-desktop", etc as needed.
209 • untitiled (by ritch on 2009-11-11 19:58:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
yeah if i change the graphics to a nvidia i get a display! it runs in live mode
but if use a ati i just get a blank screen even on the live cd
but thats not a new one with unbuntu ?
usually it falls just as the desktop is about to appear so you cant even get it installed..
the distro has never been very good with ati cards though it does work on my laptops
what is new is when its installed using the nvidia card know instead of an ati everything is fine!
it install everything goes smooth,
im enjoy how good this new version is!
i reboot, blank screen the word grub and a flashing cursor thats unresponsive, ive rebooted installed again this time manually directing grub where to install still the same problem, the grub problem is ive tried even putting it where i know is wrong! fouling my windows install, where ever i put grub however i try and configure it..the same result
basicly grub is not seeing or listing any off the installation though they are there and is unresponsive, so i can't get to a terminal... so the only option is reboot and install something different, which has been mandriva and the pre build to the new suse that due any day..
both of which display and work faultlessly with the ati cards put back in the machines
completely unrelated to the x fouling with an ati card.....
which is an ubuntu problem that has always been there...
i probably never made that clear
it can't be my harddrive! which would be the obvious one because ive no problem installing mandriva ive reformated them just incase
the installer in ubuntu has always been unbuntus strongest card
have never had a problem with it before and ive tryed everyone since 4.04
it can only conclude their is a bug with the way grub 2 and ext 4 is set up in the installer and since its new in unbutu im hoping a 9.10.1 release fixing the bug will come through soon
know it is a bug because im on 9.10 know but on my laptop...
so it is only happening with certain hardware
it is rather lovely i must say when its working, if they sort the grub prob with an update i will be replacing mandriva with this i like the new ubuntu
with the x thing its just a pain in the arse, but is too long winded to fix..
so i use go to terminal etc but know i won't waste my time...
its basicly x misconfiguring the card...
but if we ever hope to attract people from the windows camp over, rebooting a system to a blank screen cause x has just failed is sloppy,
linux needs to default to a safe or vesa basic graphics mode, makes it so much easier to fix
thats why i recomend mandriva or mepis to show someone new to linux
the kde desktop is a bit more windows user friendly
mandriva has a safe mode at login
mepis has a stupid amount of login choices and a basic vesa mode
210 • Re. 182 You could be correct but there is aproblem. (by Eddie Wilson on 2009-11-11 20:20:10 GMT from United States)
corneliu said,"MHO there are lots of good Linux desktops, some of them even better than Ubuntu. Some people say that Ubuntu is hurting the Linux desktop because it is buggy. I am not sure about that but I hate the idea that Ubuntu is THE Linux desktop. I don't think it is fair because I don't think Ubuntu is the best Linux desktop. Anyway, don't worry, if Ubuntu fails, Linux desktop will definitely survive, maybe it'll get even stronger."
Don't get me wrong. I know there are a lot of good distros. Some even better. Ubuntu is not hurting Linux because any distro that is trying to be installed by someone who doesn't know much about Linux or has never installed an os will have problems. I believe that includes most of the computer users on the planet. No other company has put as much into marketing as the folks who develop Ubuntu. That's why it's considered THE Linux desktop by the general public. I'm not saying the best even tho its always worked for me. What is the best? I don't know but still if Ubuntu was to fail it WOULD put an image in the mind of the general public that Linux cannot complete and that would be very hard for anybody to overcome. That is what I meant when I said that nobody should want Ubuntu to fail.
211 • Linux for the over 60s (by DG on 2009-11-11 20:31:39 GMT from Netherlands)
I saw a news article about providing Internet access for the older generation, with a simple desktop on a Linux box!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8352606.stm
http://www.discount-age.co.uk/simplicity_computers/
212 • re 210 (by corneliu on 2009-11-11 20:53:17 GMT from Canada)
@Eddie - OK, thanks for clarification.
Just to clarify my position, I don't hate Ubuntu and I hope it gets better and better, I just hate the idea that Ubuntu is "the" Linux desktop. The only Linux distro that I hate is Suse because of the Novell-Microsoft deal. I hope it goes down in flames. Checking the distrowatch rankings, Suse lost some users lately. I hope the trend continues.
213 • learn to think (by ianam on 2009-11-11 21:05:04 GMT from United States)
"Adam Williamson: "Fedora 12 should be one of the highest quality Fedora releases for a while.
That is a funny statement. Does this mean that we can expect Fedora 13 (and 14, 15, 16) to be worse than Fedora 12?"
No, it means that you fail at comprehension. Fedora 12 should be one of the highest quality Fedora releases until there are so many higher quality releases that Fedora 12 no longer counts among "the highest". It's like getting a good score in a game and getting onto the leaderboard. Yours will be one of the highest scores until you get knocked off the leaderboard.
214 • Worst wave of releases ever? (by BitBurners.com on 2009-11-11 21:05:43 GMT from Finland)
Ubuntu 9.10: Booted the live CD, connected to WLAN, clicked on Firefox --> system freeze. I have used every version since 7.04 on this PC, and mostly without issues
openSUSE 11.2RC2: Booted the KDE live CD just to find out that WPA2 does not work. Ok, it's not yet final but based on the bug reports....it will not work on the final. We'll see.
Mandy 2010: Going Mandriva then, as everything else fails and booting the KDE liveCD. System boots with some error messages/windows on screen, performance is very sluggish (most likely a radeon problem, can be fixed at Xorg.conf)...kind of a turnoff to see errors on 1st boot.
Hardware: IBM Thinkpad T41
215 • 9.10 works fine (by orzeu on 2009-11-11 21:06:45 GMT from Poland)
I had no issues with Ubuntu 9.10 and mostly never had since 5.04. I always do a fresh install, tweak it a little bit - and it works fine. However, I __thought__ of having linux before buying each and every PC hardware some time ago.
That is why I have a HP Compaq laptop with Intel hardware and it never failed with linux support for me. 9.10 finally works as MS with external monitor support for my laptop (resolution and refresh-wise) so I'm good with that new release.
Would be easier to think forward with hardware-support before buying it. On Vista/Win7 people do it anyway when checking is hardware has sufficient drivers ... why not do it with Linux? :/
216 • No subject (by ianam on 2009-11-11 21:15:47 GMT from United States)
The fact that the better Linux distributions do "just work" on a significant variety of hardware is a real credit to the developers.
Well duh. And a better Linux distribution, on which the developers had done a better job, would "just work" on more hardware than Ubuntu 9.10 does.
I read a lot of complaining and much of it is from people with unrealistic expectations. No developer, no matter how large, can test on all possible PC hardware in all possible combinations.
Such silly hyperbole; no such testing of "all possible combinations" is necessary. Quite adequate testing can be done via the open distribution of betas to the huge Linux community; the problem is proper analysis and prioritizing of bug reports.
217 • More... (by Oncle Jean on 2009-11-11 22:14:40 GMT from Canada)
To add to what I wrote (# 126), I think we, Linux users, are a bit responsible for such distros that are "not perfect". We like to have new versions. We really want them. We're impatient to try them. A new version comes to the surface and we all jump on it. The developers know it... And there's the 6 month cycle to attract users because it works ! No ???
218 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-12 00:23:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #205
Fair comment; donations are yet again another thing completely.
Ref #213
Perhaps it's a case of you're only as good as your next distro?
Re #f216
Fine in theory, but, as you may have discovered, most people can't be arsed to do the bug reporting, possibly owing to lack of expertise identifying a bug in the first instance, time and no lack of other distros to try...
I suspect this notion of a Linux "community" is another cyber myth. Judging by the comments on this forum, not excluding respected authors...folk argue semantics (til they just dig themselves deeper), let alone the merits or demerits of any particular distro.
Ref #217
No, we are not responsible for imperfect distros...that honour belongs solely to the devs. If Canonical or RedHat or Fedora have the financial wherewithal to hire devs then it is their responsibility to turn out a useable product...it's the fit-for-purpose requirement.
That said, if a distro is of the one-man-and-his-wolf variety then nobody really expects it to work for long owing to that very fact. It is a hobbyist distro then full marks for taking on such a project but unless you have really deep pockets so you don't need to work it is not going to be taken seriously for those wanting a replacement/alternative for an MS system.
Now a comment apropos none of the above...possibly...you can judge for yourselves. This may be old news to some but probably most have not read about the topic. I remarked some months ago about the legal pitfalls of designing, building, promulgating to an end user and actually using a program/app/OS.
See this and puzzle out if it affects FOSS stuff or GNU licences, hobbyists etc, lol.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/draftdir.html
219 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-12 00:31:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #218
If you can't be arsed to read all of it and who could blame you...the para, which might be of interest is about fourth from last.
Those folk who wrote a while back about the need to be wary of MS bearing gifts knew what they were talking about...
220 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-12 01:24:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #218
If you found the article linked at the end interesting, here's more from the same author, dealing with the socio/legal issues of computering/software, so it is on topic...almost, lol.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/
221 • x and linux (by ritch on 2009-11-12 01:40:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
to expand on my problem of ubuntu on my hardware alway misconfiguring x so all i get is a black screen with an ati card
i think x is the most important problem with linux and it implementation it is what makes linux look hard and impenetrable and badly broken..to the outside world
know you think if your new to linux
you put in what ever the latest best distro is supposed to be fedora mandriva debian ubuntu it dosen't matter
you install from a very nice live mode you reboot!
but you get hit with a blank screen cause x has failed
what do you think that windows users first thought are going to be ?
they are going to be scathing and very brutal about linux
know we have all experienced that one! all off us, we all learned to cope and we all learned ways round it..
manually configuring x through a terminal or trying install an available basic driver through apt-get etc
but it is a sure fire way to halt any ablity for linux to go thurther than it has on the desktop!
mandriva has a safe mode but even mandriva in regular mode dumps u to a blank screen if x fails! a way has to be found that if linux wants to compete with the out side world
x must defautl to a basic vesa mode as standard if x fails
in theory its not so hard to do, so why is there no linux distro that is configured to do that
because in every other area linux beats windows hands down
but this one fault i feel takes all the hard proffesional work off every aspect of linux! and flushes it down the toilet as far as desktop enviroments are concerned
i think in linux having such a negative attitude to windows!
we don't see some off our worst faults
(never seen windows as a poor operating system as such, infact there is a lot to like about it. 98se 2000 and 7 are all extremely good systems, off course security is one major failing! but the drm and abusive buisness tactics microsoft put with it is something i don't like)
know i feel that, that one small change would give linux a more stable base to move more main stream!
what does anyone else think
222 • Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (by Carl Smuck on 2009-11-12 01:47:54 GMT from United States)
When I tried the 32 bit version I could not download and install the nvidia video card driver for my laptop. The 32 bit version is extremely buggy. Luckily my computers are both capable of running 64 bit operating systems. I tried the 64 bit version on both my Compaq CQ60 laptop and my desktop which is a 5 year old athlon 64 system I built and it works just fine. I am betting that most of the people having problems with Ubuntu linux 9.10 are using the 32 bit version. Maybe they are also using computers that cannot run the 64 bit version. Or if for some reason there is no way they can use the 64 bit version of Ubuntu or Xubuntu they might want to try Fedora 11. With the 64 bit version of Ubuntu I was able to get a proprietary wireless driver for the broadcom wireless N card I put into my laptop and it works great. My bedroom where I normally use my laptop is two floors below the location of the router. That is far but I often get a 100% signal. My wireless network connection was never that strong under Microsoft Windows vista.
223 • the Ubuntu distro (by Florence Johns on 2009-11-12 01:49:46 GMT from United States)
All this talk all over about a distro that just can't test out well against many others (as downloaded, burned and installed from cd).
They have a lot of money to keep them in place in the distro world, but it really does not have the solid aspects of many others.
It is too bad because linux needs a solid hammer against Microsoft and the "most popular" linux is not solid and that drives people back to their Windows.
224 • RE: 223/Can't Test Out Well (by Landor on 2009-11-12 02:56:44 GMT from Canada)
Can't test out well is actually relative. Relative to the minority. I've followed this online fairly closely and the numbers are "relative" to just a few, per capita.
I'd also consider your one statement a variation of Godwin's Law. You give 0 information regarding your experience and then you speak of money keeping them in place.
Linux needs no hammer against any other company. Linux outshines all in it's leading market. The desktop for the end user is basically just an secondary, well, third, level of Linux. Any Mainstream Desktop Big Boys are a proving ground for the first two, that's all.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
225 • momos (by Woody Oaks on 2009-11-12 03:07:11 GMT from United States)
Am I alone in finding this sobriquet especially appropriate?
226 • @213 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-11-12 03:08:38 GMT from Canada)
There's no need to be aggressive. My original post in fact unfortunately ambiguous; it can be read either way.
227 • 2 Cents + M$ again!!! (by D1Knight on 2009-11-12 03:22:11 GMT from United States)
IMHO, yes I do believe it would be much better to give the devs a year instead 6 months. The devs could use the time to squash A LOT more bugs, better to make each and every release as rock solid as possible. The extra time should also alleviate some stress. This would probably help out more new people, that are willing to try a Linux Distro. Plus with a year time frame, this is where you would get to the literal "Rubber meets the Road" judgement calls "To use or not to use Distro X".-end of rant.
Micro Sick (M$) is at it again, http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091111094923390 FYI-raiden.net had the link posted. This is just one more reason for a turn off to M$ products and instilling even more of a distrust for there OS, and there company ethics (or lack there of). I am not hating M$, just the opposite I am rejoicing that I use any other OS, instead of. :)
228 • ubuntu (by shady on 2009-11-12 08:00:23 GMT from United States)
I usually run ubuntu, fedora, and windows on a triple-boot, with ubuntu mostly replaced by ultimate edition, but my ubuntu is running so well right now I'm kinda afraid to install UE over it. I know I'll have my hands full with F12...
no complaints so far.
229 • Mandriva 2010 ... (by Victor on 2009-11-12 08:58:05 GMT from Italy)
Personally I think Mandriva 2010 is a distribution which will pour a large part of users, which in the past has preferred to leave, waiting for more prosperous times.
Hello Victor
230 • No luck/luks with Linux (by Kleist on 2009-11-12 10:18:12 GMT from Ukraine)
Multiple distros (Ubuntu, Arch, now Sidux, others) fail miserably and handling encrypted swap and data partitions at startup.
231 • Ubuntu (by Myra on 2009-11-12 10:22:24 GMT from United States)
I've used Ubuntu since 7.04 with few problems. I started with Karmic while in beta and was unimpressed and switched to #!. Since then I seemed to have regressed. I used to want something that just worked out of the box, now I prefer to use something that requires some thought. I've switched to Arch. Yes the install takes longer and you have to do more of the work yourself, but I'm kind of enjoying getting back to setting my machine up the way I want it, not the way the OS vendor wants it. That's one of the reasons I left MS.
Before anyone screams "you can do that with all Linux distros", I would like to point out that you can but with Arch you don't have minimal dependcies from Gnome, KDE, of XFCE if you want to run a window manager that doesn't do everything for you like openbox.
I agree with the comments about Ubuntu's dependencies, but some of those come from upstream -- Gnome.
One of the things I love about Arch is the ABS system. It allows you to tweak your installs to your computer. Something I always thought was great about Gentoo. I find I'm actually re-discovering a lot of knowledge I lost while running Windows and I really enjoy it.
232 • Test of ubuntu karmic 64bits (by Pirlot on 2009-11-12 10:35:08 GMT from France)
Ubuntu karmic 64bits works well on the following configuration:
M/B ASUS P5Q3 / 4GB DDR3 1333MHz / Intel E8500 Dual Core 3,16GHz/ Graphics card ASUS GeForce EN8500GT HDMI 512Mo / DVD reader Sony DDU1621 Primary IDE1 Slave / CD RW Sony CRX225A Primary IDE1 Master/ HD Western Digital Caviar 250 GO SATA N°1 / HD Hitachi Deskstar 160 GO SATA N°2
233 • 9.10 is great (by Leandro on 2009-11-12 10:53:05 GMT from Brazil)
I have installed 9.10 on 4 desktops, 32 and 64 bits, with very different hardware, and installed it on 5 laptops: a eeePC 701, a eeePC 1008HA, a Vaio VGN/CR, another Vaio VGN/NR and an old Toshiba with a celeron drive. In all cases everything was essentially perfect. I didn't have to tweak anything. For me it was the best release ever, and by the title of the posts complaining I can certainly perceive that. There have been some people with trouble, but you cannot find many posts complaining of specific hardware problems as in older releases, which can actually be tracked down.
234 • #222 64bit (by ritch on 2009-11-12 11:05:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
carl thanks for the info !
will try the 64bit version, see if that works!
but a broken 32bit version this is not good
the ubuntu hystera is something i feel has did more damage than good
outside the linux work
who wants a turd brown desktop
ive always like the way it works, graphic drivers etc, when it work's.
have always found it quite buggy except id say round about 7.10/ 8.04
when it performed quite well, had no major problems!
but a desktop that is propeled up as the face of linux, and can't keep producing these kind off show stopping bugs.
all other distros with longer development or better development time frames and produce a more stable product and reputations are tarnished and that of linux as a whole is tarnished
(the bugs of ubuntu are seen as linux bugs and not just ubuntus by though outside linux)
having every release ubuntu as seen as the top dog is not correct or healthy
yes ubuntu has done somethings better than others, there is no doubt of that!
but so has suse, fedora, mandriva, sabayon, debian etc... each distro has something over the other one to commend it.
id like to see the top spot change to who ever has the strongest release that year!
we dont want one distro in a monopoly position know do we, competetion is inovation in linux
if ubuntu falls down the league, maybe they'll try harder next release
and produce something all linux user can hold up and be proud to show as a great example of a linux desktop
235 • 9.10 multiple successes (by AUM11 on 2009-11-12 11:19:33 GMT from Australia)
I have fresh installed Karmic on 3 64 bit laptops,and 1 netbook and all went totally smoothly.
I did upgrades successfully on 2 32 bit pcs and 2 32 bit laptops.
I had problems with a many time upgraded 32 bit lappy, so simply did a fresh install, which then worked well.
Overall I rate Karmic as a significant improvement over Jaunty, running smoothly and fast.
YMMV.
236 • ubuntu bugs (by ritch on 2009-11-12 11:55:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
i have noticed when people have put up succesful experiences, with ubuntu and their hardware..
ive noticed it is generally intel core 2 duo with a nvidia card
i have noticed a few ati and amd user complaining of similar complaints to me...
so i can conclude that unbuntu is very bug but thoughs bugs only manifest them selves on certain hardware...that its is not configured that well for..
i think there is a general split ati being the best on windows and nvidia if the drivers are preinstalled being the best for linux (cause their driver installation sucks big time, ati's runs flawlessly and easily, but you need x up first to install it)
intel chips being the best chip to run on linux and amd being the best bang for buck on windows...
this obviously this should not be happening.. ubuntu running wonderfully on one persons pc and a dogs dinner on another with an alternative set of popular hardware
which is obviously the case here, there is a definite split between people saying "i don't know what everyone's problem is? mine is working fine" and people tearing there hair out and cursing its broken buggy carcass
i'd give ubuntu a - out of 10 score because if every third or fourth pc it goes on its a dog dinner!
that does linux a huge amount of harm! in its perseption to potential migrants from the windows world
in my case the 4th computer i tried,
it installed flawlessly, an intel based one, and running it on this i'd say its easily the best ubuntu ever.... but that is only if you can get it running in the first place
237 • re 155 (by illiterate on 2009-11-12 12:45:33 GMT from Greece)
try AV,
http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html
238 • illiterate (by ritch on 2009-11-12 12:59:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
thank you for the link!
looks like a good wee distro
the problem with jack in known bugs is a bit off a bummer, since im a musician but they say theyre working on a fix!
im downloading it know to give it a wirl
239 • re 237 (by ritch on 2009-11-12 13:05:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
reread the the bug, its not that important a bug, cant wait to give it a try again thank you for the link
240 • Ubuntu (by Nick on 2009-11-12 13:49:54 GMT from Netherlands)
I installed karmic on 2 systems and i noticed it was alot more stable and faster than jaunty. It feels way more polished then previous versions. So no problems for me:)
241 • Ubuntu (by SW on 2009-11-12 14:22:25 GMT from Germany)
A week ago I made a clean install on an older computer, and since then it runs smooth and without any problems.
AMD Sempron 2800+ 1,6 GHz, 500 MB RAM, ATI Radion 9200 Pro grafik card
242 • the karmic is awesome! (by BLACK PANTHER on 2009-11-12 14:55:16 GMT from Greece)
The complaints about the karmic just reflect the growing popularity and expectations of this formidable distro!
Not all of these complaints are real though...
It is a common secret that microsoft fears the advancing power of ubuntu and we all know that ubuntu is the only distro that can challenge the hideous monopoly of windows.
For me as a person than continually converts tens of persons from windows to ubuntu,karmic is still the best ubuntu distro.
We all know that every new distro needs an exhaustive testing before reaching the state of stability of the previous, so any real problems and bugs is not a big issue after all...
Now let's all prepare and contribute for the next ubuntu release that will blow the microsoft fortress away!
243 • linux desktop not that important?? (by Sean on 2009-11-12 15:42:06 GMT from United States)
in post 224 landor is saying something i am not sure i understand well.
every comments area i read in dw is talking about this or that distro on their desktop or laptop, with a few servers here and there mentioned.
indeed, dw seems to me to be about the linux desktop.
perhaps i do not understand that post by landor. if it is about linux vs windows and linux not emphasising desktop and thus winning or competing with windows in a large way, i of course disagree.
244 • it's really that bad (by carolinason on 2009-11-12 15:48:43 GMT from United States)
i've been a solid ubuntu user for the last two years. 9.04 was to me a great distro and i liked it very much. as usual i loaded the alphas, they where horrible. in the past it was not uncommon to run an alpha of ubuntu all the way up to the release, but even the final version of 9.10 caused me headaches. compiz didn't play nice with my video card, dual monitor support was not working well, the graphical installer would die, grub wouldn't work and i had to install it from the live cd. none of this where an issue before. i finally have it running okay with the replacement of an open source supported video card to a proprietary driver card, the 2d is open source and the 3d driver supplied doesn't work that well, need further testing. anyway, how could i recommend this to a new user... I can't. this ubuntu is defecting
245 • re: 242 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-12 18:20:00 GMT from United States)
"so any real problems and bugs is not a big issue after all." - unless you install it an encounter them then they matter. Or maybe you believe the problems are user related, not Ubuntu related.
" microsoft fears the advancing power of ubuntu" - bit over the top
"Now let's all prepare and contribute for the next ubuntu " - this is now a Ubuntu forum?
My biggest issue (emphasis "my") is that Ubuntu fanboys seem to see the world as them vrs everyone (emphasis "everyone") else, they don't see themselves as members of the Linux family, somehow they're a breed apart not because they invented it, nor because they contribute more than others but because they are just special.
246 • Ref#245 (by Micky Rourke on 2009-11-12 18:28:42 GMT from United States)
"...Ubuntu fanboys ...". That's slap in the face of the girls using Ubuntu.
I know you the rest rest of the Ubuntu bashers are just jealous. Trying to demean using the term "fan" this or that will not stop the Ubuntu force moving ahead.
Don't hate us because we're beautiful. Join us.
Ubuntu for the foreseeable future will be leading the pack. Just get use to it.
247 • RE: 243 and Linux Focus (by Landor on 2009-11-12 20:13:41 GMT from Canada)
The Linux market is Servers and Enterprise. That's where the money is and that's a huge factor in the Top Linux Companies/Distribution's present/future goals.
None of those companies make any money "really" via the end user desktop machine. That was my point. They don't really worry about Windows on the Desktop. Sure they do to a degree, but not for the home user exactly. They concern themselves with Server and Enterprise Desktop solutions. Let's take Compizfor instance and this makes me smile, I don't think you see a lot of decision making over at RHEL in the way of 3D Desktop Animations like Wobbly Windows or Drawing Flames on your desktop.
Reason I used Compiz as a point, look at last week's comments here and this week's. There have been a few that had problems with "compiz" and such. I'm sure over at Canonical with them trying to make a showing with the Enterprise/Server market, they're not too worried about Compiz at all. Nor are their potential clients.
So in essence, we're a few rungs down the ladder for these things when they have agendas (like keeping their business model afloat) that make things like Compiz causing problems with the very latest drivers inconsequential at best.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
248 • Ubuntu 9.10 screen resolution (by Henning Melgaard on 2009-11-12 20:44:16 GMT from Denmark)
I have tested Ubuntu 9.10 on my pc with an Intel Integrated Graphics Card (82865G).
With Ubuntu 9.10 I get a max screen resolution of 800x600.
I just tested Open Suse 11.2. It gives me a screen resolution of 1280x1024 on the same pc.
So Ubuntu: you CAN do better!
And I hope you will, since Ubuntu has allways been one of my favourites.
249 • @247 (by Taigong on 2009-11-12 21:33:10 GMT from Canada)
Landor:
Although the $$$ maybe from the server market, but more effort in programing was put in the desktop area as can be seen from the number of desktop oriented distros vs. server oriented distros listed on this site (10 to 1 or maybe even 20 to 1).
If you read the release announcement about Ubuntu9.10 on this site: "Ubuntu 9.10 brings changes small and large that all have a common purpose - to make Ubuntu the most user-friendly operating system available. Ubuntu 9.10 features a redesigned, faster boot and login experience, a revamped audio framework, and improved 3G broadband connectivity, all of which contribute to a first-class user experience. " You can see that all the effort are targeted at desktop users. In fact, most of the improvements made in the recent bunch of releases, have nothing to do servers at all. My guess is that most, if not all, server operators don't even bother upgrade their OS. Weighing the risk and gain of upgrading the OS on a server, people probably will take the "if not broken, don't fix" approach. This is more likely the reason why you don't see complains related to servers.
250 • Karmic Koala and who's to blame (by Rarsa on 2009-11-12 22:18:59 GMT from Canada)
I won't repeat my self as I already wrote an entry in my blog a few days ago:
http://rarsa.blogspot.com/2009/11/karmic-koala-whos-to-blame-for-issues.html
In summary. Who's to blame?
- Early adopters that didn't do due diligence.
- Canonical, for removing the LTS link from the main download page.
Please don't respond if you don't read my full explanation.
251 • Re: 250 "Karmic Koala and who´s to blame (by Henning Melgaard on 2009-11-12 22:40:27 GMT from Denmark)
As you say in your article:
"There was time to test the alphas, betas and RCs. I'm sure the developers do not have access to all the different combinations of hardware out there. Linux is a community effort. It is only by contributing with testing that we can ensure the release will come out cleaner."
Well, that is exactely what I did. I tested every release of Ubuntu 9.10, from Alpha 3 to the RC. And I reported a bug at http://launchpad.net, explaining my problem. (bug nr 408588).
I took the time to upload every single file they asked me to. The bug has been confirmed by other users with similar problems. But nothing has happened. Absolutely nothing.....
252 • Re: 250 Karmic Koala and who´s to blame (by Henning Melgaard on 2009-11-12 22:48:46 GMT from Denmark)
And by the way:
I also submitted ideas at:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
suggesting ways to make it easier for users to workaround this problem. Both ideas that I submitted were marked "Not an idea" without any further explanation.
253 • @251: Your experience supports my point (by rarsa on 2009-11-12 22:56:43 GMT from Canada)
You tested it you found a bug that affects you. It may even be an ugly bug.
This means that you are not going to install it in a critical system if you think that that issue will affect it.
That's exactly what I was referring to. Karmic is not going to burn you. You did your due diligence.
My point was directed to the people that were complaining about Karmic rendering their main system unusable.
I'm sure you realize that "perfect" is rarely feasible. In complex software systems is practically impossible.
254 • @ 251 (by Henning Melgaard on 2009-11-12 23:22:53 GMT from Denmark)
I would never ask for perfect. Reasonably workable is more than enough.
I spent a long time searching the internet for a workaround.
I found out that it is possible to choose between different versions of the Intel driver. This gave me a partial solution to my problem.
Screen resolution got usable, but some homepages would flickr when I scrolled down over them.
Now, I have tested other Linux distro´s that have a feature where you can easily choose between different versions of Intel drivers.
I suggested at brainstorm.ubuntu that this was made possible in Ubuntu Software Center, where you can already install different versions of the Nvidia driver. This would save users the time for searching the internet for guides on how to do this manually.
The response was simply "Not an idea".
This only adds to my frustration. I did everything I could. I am not expecting miracles, but some kind of reaction.......
255 • A Global View (by Oncle Jean on 2009-11-13 00:11:35 GMT from Canada)
From your comments, all, I think I can conclude the most popular Linux distros are "in the average": neither very good, nor very bad. This raises a question: do the developers of these distros voluntarily build average systems knowing that's the way they can reach some popularity ? If the answer is "yes", the meaning is those who develop the other distros don't see popularity as a top priority. If it is "no", your turn... :o)
256 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-13 00:26:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #254
You can see now perhaps why some folk can't be arsed to report bugs...and why "we" are not responsible for duff dstros.
Ref the early adoption of a new distro; perhaps we can take a leaf from I Asimov's "I Robot" and come up with the Laws of Linux?
!). Not all dstros work on all machines...get over it.
2). Never install a new dstro on your main machine...and complain about it afterwards when It won't work...wait until the honeymoon is over...then you know what you are really dealing with...
257 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-13 00:42:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #256
One more...
3). If a distro does work out of the box first time, then obviously you have no idea at all what you are doing...and consequently sensible enough to not to muck around with the "noapic" (and similar) option...
258 • Mandriva 2010 seems fine (by Adam Michael Drake on 2009-11-13 00:57:21 GMT from United States)
currently running live cd on my laptop. wireless, volume buttons, everything working in live mode. It also booted very fast (and beautiful). The only complaint I have is that right now Firefox is underlining every word I type like they are all misspelled. Must be set to French. If it runs this well on my desktop, I'm installing for sure. also download the new Mint RC. can't wait to see how it looks...
259 • Mandriva vs openSuse vs Mint vs Ubuntu (by Adam Michael Drake on 2009-11-13 01:37:05 GMT from United States)
Well, Mandriva (One KDE live) was the only OS that recognized and enabled my wireless router on this laptop by default (broadcom chipset). Mandriva also wins the beauty contest against the others. The new openSUSE (gnome and kde live) booted the quickest, but it's still boring. Ubuntu 9.10 and Mint 8 are running fine for me on my desktop. I'll probably remove W7 and triple boot Mandriva, Mint RC, and Ubuntu on the desktop.
Ubuntu always works fine on my 3+ year old Dell desktop. Mint always works even better. Still, I agree with the others that it should not fail on hardware that a previous release worked on.
Rolling releases are good if you you want a bleeding edge OS on your home PC. For an enterprise (that takes up to 6 months to test a new OS to make sure it's really solid), you want a stable release with a predictable application and driver configuration. You can't expect a business to install a rolling release distro knowing it will change and possibly stop working with the business system and enterprise settings.
forest: you rock. you think logically and I always agree with your opinions. We must be kindrid spirits. :)
260 • Rolling releases, 152, 185 and others (by Barnabyh on 2009-11-13 01:44:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have just updated a pre-Etch system from the testing phase, last updated Jan 2007, with no issues whatsoever. It even still had Firefox on there (pinned), from before the switch to Iceweasel. It's been dormant that long so no security issues. Was nice to see it going so smoothly. Typical Debian quality, will try and upgrade it to Lenny next week but expect no issues.
Yes folks, all use Debian! One can also do rolling with Slackware, using slapt-get and tracking current, no problem usually, and if small issues creep up one can consult the ng or linuxquestions.
@185, I used Foresight linux around version 0.9 for a while, and the rolling upgrades went pretty smooth as well (from memory, it's been a long time).
261 • Re 251 Need to compare apples to apples (not apples to oranges) (by Observer on 2009-11-13 02:09:11 GMT from Australia)
>>I have tested Ubuntu 9.10 on my pc with an Intel Integrated Graphics Card (82865G).
With Ubuntu 9.10 I get a max screen resolution of 800x600.
I just tested Open Suse 11.2. It gives me a screen resolution of 1280x1024 on the same pc.
So Ubuntu: you CAN do better!
And I hope you will, since Ubuntu has allways been one of my favourites.<<
Ubuntu 9.10 uses an earlier version of Xorg server than do openSUSE 11.2 or Fedora 12 and that may well be the difference. Thus the problem may well be "upstream", at Xorg. There is also the fact that Canonical provides much less engineering resources to the development of its desktop Linux distro editions than either Novell or Red Hat and thus a diminished ability to rectify issues that require them.
Cheers
262 • I have two comments (by Verndog on 2009-11-13 04:06:29 GMT from United States)
(1)"248 • Ubuntu 9.10 screen resolution (by Henning Melgaard on 2009-11-12 20:44:16 GMT from Denmark)
I have tested Ubuntu 9.10 on my pc with an Intel Integrated Graphics Card (82865G).
With Ubuntu 9.10 I get a max screen resolution of 800x600"
I also have an intel i865 chip. I use to have the exact same problem as your early on in the karmic cycle. UNTIL Intel upgraded the their driver. It is a combination of kernel and driver update. Make sure you have the latest intel drive and kernel from karmic installed. Also make sure you haven't created a xorg.conf file.
(2) SuSe 11.2 All I can say is WOW! I AM IMPRESSED.
I'm a Ubuntu user for a while now. I also have Fedora Gnome installed. Tried Fedora11 KDE4.3. It was so-so. HAd some issues especially with speed. To be expected with KDE4.3.
This newest SuSe offer if amazing. Very fast. It's been awhile since I tried Suse, but I read a blog with someone not associated with any distro who tried them all and came up with SuSe as being the best KDE4.3 distro. He was right.
Ubuntu will probably still be my main distro. I will keep Fedora and now SuSe looks very promising. I has unbelievable display graphics. I am totally blown away with the art work detail that was done.
Folks this is the reason we have so many distros! To keep each one eying the others and trying to make a better product.
I also know of the dislike for Novell and their ties to Microsoft.
Still, if you haven't tried SuSe in a while, like myself, give it a chance. It's worth it.
263 • Ubuntu 9.10 working good here (by Zac on 2009-11-13 09:30:18 GMT from Australia)
Ubuntu 9.10 is working fine over here.
Beware of the vocal minority.I started with Ubuntu 6.10 which was running with absolutely no problems for 20 months. Only after I had installed it and was using it that I realized people whinging and complaining of how buggy it was. I never had experienced that.
So people beware of reviews.
Make up your own mind.
Unfortunately there are some people with other agendas when criticising distros.
BTW: opensuse still fails to work on my generic Dell PC but does that mean opensuse is buggy and a step backward? No, but using the same thinking of many commenters here it would be.
264 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Luke on 2009-11-13 10:28:16 GMT from United States)
I have been dabbling with various Linux-based desktops for years but am basicall a novice as far as getting "under the hood." I did build my first Linux box almost nine years ago with Red Hat on an old 386 machine, using it as a hardware firewall.
But I've been watching and waiting for a distro that I considered a true Windows replacement for me personally. The time has come and I'm now running Ubuntu 9.10 as my primary system (dual booting Windows on a separate hard drive, for the kids). It's working like a charm for me. No problems on this old Dell Optiplex GX270. I also sometimes run Windows 7 release candidate in a Virtualbox VM, with no problems. I'll test some other distros in VM too.
A little tweaking here and there but for the most part the kernel and packages are sufficiently developed for a shade-tree mechanic. I'm looking to upgrade to a dual-core AMD machine pretty soon, so we'll see how that goes. For now I couldn't be happier with Ubuntu's latest. I'm sure many other distros are fine as well.
265 • Ubuntu for the foreseeable future will be leading the pack. Just get use to it. (by Anonymous on 2009-11-13 11:43:51 GMT from United States)
I think Fedora, Suse and Mandriva might disagree.
266 • Ubuntu Karmic (by charlv on 2009-11-13 12:06:30 GMT from South Africa)
I have no idea what the people are complaining about. I have now installed it on 2 of my machines, one being a desktop and the other a 2 year old laptop. So far no major issues and I believe overall it is a much more rounded release than 9.04.
267 • Landor #247 post (by Sean on 2009-11-13 12:33:24 GMT from United States)
Well (grinning) "the linux market." Heh.. I'm talking usage and you're talking money.
I do not feel dislodged from my point, you even seem to make my point in a way, as we're posting at a site that has a page hit list of desktop linux distros, not a list of servers and enterprise (although enterprise distros are included, they certainly are not the majority). ;)
268 • Ultilex (by Inca Roads on 2009-11-13 13:04:49 GMT from France)
Ultilex 5.0 is out ...
http://ultilex.linux-bg.org/#about
The Ultilex ISO boots into a selection menu with several up to date distros ...
Slax version 6.1.2
Puppy Linux version 4.3.1
Tiny Core version 2.4.1
System Rescue CD version 1.3.1
Parted Magic version 4.5
boot.kernel.org (BKO)
... very interesting and useful, too. There's also some additional stuff in the menu, like a Windows password recovery tool, bootable DOS etc.
269 • vector!? (by Matt on 2009-11-13 13:16:42 GMT from Canada)
i just noticed vector 6 kde classic came out, or whatever it's exactly called... why would anyone run such a thing? kde is killing support for 3.5 so why would anyone bother running something like that? that's the reason why i switched from mepis to kubuntu for a little while. once mepis with kde4 comes out i'll switch back, but who wants to run something that old? fine, maybe it works, and i'll admit i like 3.5 better than 4 when i tried it in kubuntu, but we don't have a choice in the matter and shouldn't be so stupid as to run something that old and that out of date no matter how much better it works. barely anyone runs windows 98 anymore even though it is worlds better than windows 7... it's because it's not supported anymore, programs don't work on it anymore, so we have to abandon it. it's just a fact of life.
give up vector, you just wasted a release
270 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-13 13:53:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
AMD of the US...I'm blushing already.
Ref #269
Matt, you really, really, really should not have said that...you will awaken the sleeping tigress who treats Vector as one of her cubs. Now we shall have endless "constructive" comments and justifications...lol.
271 • re #269 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-13 14:30:43 GMT from United States)
it will be years before people stop using kde3.5 - Vector has just gotten themselves a niche piece of the distro world
272 • REF-264 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Luke (by Verndog on 2009-11-13 15:48:52 GMT from United States)
Luke , I also have a Dell GX270. It's great for Ubuntu distro's. I had problems with the video until the latest xorg, kernel and intel drivers fixed it all.
If you want to try out KDE4.3, give the latest suse11.2 a run. I'm very impressed with it's speed.
273 • RE: # 269 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-13 15:51:39 GMT from Italy)
"who wants to run something that old?"
Me, for instance, and I suppose a zillion other people.
KDE3 isn'told at all, and KDE4 is still missing tons of functionality, has beta applications and so on.
Kudos to the Vector team. Not only their distro is always excellent, but they are showing a lot of common sense. Like PClinuxOS, a distro which gets the job done without fuss, even for Joe User.
274 • RE: #223 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-13 16:02:32 GMT from Italy)
"It is too bad because linux needs a solid hammer against Microsoft and the "most popular" linux is not solid and that drives people back to their Windows."
That is why some people have always believed that Ubuntu is an "agent provocateur"
Heck, do you want to compete seriously? Create at least a nice default theme, that doesn't cost too much.
275 • The new openSUSE. (by Chris H. on 2009-11-13 16:48:31 GMT from United States)
I finally got the new openSUSE running last night.
Wow. Love those wiggly windows.
The live CD Gnome version acted like alpha software,
but the 4.2 gig DVD Gnome version installed
and ran very well.
Chris H.
276 • more on the new OpenSuse (by Anony Moss on 2009-11-13 17:58:53 GMT from India)
The KDE LiveCD is fast on my Thinkpad. In fact, I think its the fastest any Live CD has ever been on my hardware, and he desktop effects are enabled with the open radeon video driver.
A seamless experience is what its been so far with the LiveCD. After Mandriva, it's an even bigger (and a pleasant one) surprise for me- 11.2 looks very welll polished and integrated. I still have to install it though, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed as many a time, the install fails to live up to the promises of a LiveCD. In any case, despite the reservations about Mono, etc, this avatar of OpenSuse is worth checking out. If the install turns out to be as fast as the LiveCD, 11.2 is going to be on my machine for a long while.
But surely, the credit's not OpenSuse's alone. But also of KDE, X, the kernel and drivers. Things are certainly coming together better than ever for the desktop linux experience.
277 • ATI issues with Ubuntu 9.10 and others (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-13 18:01:07 GMT from United States)
Most of the reported problems are with older ATI graphics cards. The manufacturer has removed support for the older chipsets from the latest proprietary drivers forcing users to use the Open Source drivers instead. Sadly, those drivers are not up to snuff. Canonical and other distributors had two choices: support an older version of X.org that works with the older drivers or live with the problem. They chose the latter, which makes sense since much newer hardware, including almost anything with an Intel chipset, requires the latest and the greatest to work properly. It was a lesser of two evils choice and it's not restricted to Ubuntu. Mandriva, OpenSUSE and Fedora all have the same issue.
This is an excellent argument against proprietary drivers. ATI seems to be trying to force upgrades and purchases. A chipset with solid Open Source drivers will almost certainly never have such issues. I have an 11 year old system which still has decent graphics but it uses Open Source drivers.
Foks who have older ATI cards will probably be best served by running distros with long lifespans and long term support. Think CentOS, Scientific Linux, Ubuntu LTS, or StartCom.
278 • #269: Vector Linux 6.0 KDE Classic (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-13 18:04:39 GMT from United States)
Vector Linux didn't waste a release. Rather one of their developers, Roy Stefanussen (a/k/a nightflier), the creator of Vector Linux Light, decided to do a respin with KDE 3.5.10 based on demand from the community. It isn't a separate release at all. It's just Vector Linux 6.0 Standard with all the updates and Xfce replaced by KDE 3.5.10.
While I, personally, have no desire to go back to KDE 3.5.x I do think that the Vector Linux team is doing what they always do well: listening to their user community and delivering what that community wants. A lot of distributors could learn from the Vector Linux team. This kind of response to demand inspires loyalty and builds a community. It's the reason why Vector is still going strong after 11 years.
279 • #269, KDE3.5 and Vector Linux (by Barnabyh on 2009-11-13 19:49:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
People are still running Afterstep, Fvwm and Windowmaker for their desktop, do you suggest they all stop using it and go to KDE4 or Gnome3 soon?
There is no reason to upgrade just for the sake of it if you're happy with what you got.
Ok, some apps may not work anymore- actually it's only Kopete I can think of due to the change in Yahoo protocol apparently. But hey, if you don't use it you won't miss it, and there is probably another app that could take care of that!
So there's really no reason to switch just because the big boss wants you to, just because it's the latest and apparently you have to, or because every body else does, that's the Windows mentality. This is Linux, and you are free to run on your desktop whatever you like, without being dictated to.
280 • RE: 276 • more on the new OpenSuse (by Anony Moss (by Adam Michael Drake on 2009-11-13 20:58:27 GMT from United States)
Ditto that. I was surprised that the openSUSE live CDs (gnome and KDE) booted so fast. They were a lot faster booting than the new Mandriva, Ubuntu, and Mint live CDs. Still, I'm only installing Mandriva and Mint on my machine at home. I'll definitely keep the Mandriva live CD around no matter what just for the automatic wireless configuration...
281 • RE: 277 • ATI issues with Ubuntu 9.10 and others (by Adam Michael Drake on 2009-11-13 21:00:41 GMT from United States)
I have an older Radeon X300. It runs better now that ATI has dropped it from the latest official driver. plus no more noise from Ubuntu and Mint about installing or enabling a proprietary driver. They just stick with the default which is fine with me.
282 • Re 258 - Mandriva 2010 seems fine (by delboy711 on 2009-11-13 21:32:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yes- The issue with firefox underlining every word is known.
The fix is described in the errata
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2010.0_Errata#Firefox_sometimes_marks_all_typed_words...
283 • mono and ms (by RollMeAway on 2009-11-13 22:17:14 GMT from United States)
Those of you ignoring the use of mono in linux,
might wonder why ms just got issued a patent for sudo?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091111094923390
What is even more baffling is HOW this could have been granted?
284 • Ubuntu 9.10 thumbs up (by Pete Walker on 2009-11-13 22:48:38 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu 9.10 thumbs up - Netbook Remix on an Acer Aspire One
285 • Caitlyn's post 278 kde (by Sean on 2009-11-13 22:55:07 GMT from United States)
The way it's worded in the announcement made me wonder if that version, sort of a roll back I guess, is eventually going to be abandoned: "Many of us are comfortable with it, and are not yet ready to leave it behind."
The word, "yet." ;)
That happens to be our favorite version of kde, but we've opted for other window managers just to learn them.
286 • Vector KDE classic (by Anonymous on 2009-11-13 23:57:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
In a word ... fabulous. I don't like the bloat and still buggy nature of KDE 4 and this is the best Linux release of the last month - by a long way IMO.
Vector standard or lite is always installed on at least one of my machines, and not because they're ancient wrecks - I just like fast running systems where I'm in control.
I particularly liked the way I could install iceWM in two packages and get a real second choice fully configured and ready to use immediately, instead of some bare bone half hearted effort, like you get in most distros when trying to install iceWM or alternative 'lite' window manager.
Java and Flash pre-installed, Nvidia drivers offered as part of the install and a system that's fast and solid - what more could you want?
287 • RE: Sean 267 @ Adam/Fedora (by Landor on 2009-11-14 00:41:11 GMT from Canada)
Sean:
If there wasn't the monetary base in Linux, like Red Hat, Novell, etc, which drives Linux we wouldn't even see half the functionality we do. Take a look at kernel development from Red Hat alone. When I say RH I also include Fedora in with that without naming them. Take a look at the work Novell did on the KDE 4 project as well. There's also tons of projects that are driven buy an independent company where the devs either create a new app, or write functionality for the kernel. The Linux Landscape would be mediocre at best without any of that. So when I think Destkop, I think niche market and why I don't think Linux needs to hammer Windows, since it does well in the markets that "actually" drive it.
That one thing makes me shake my head. Sure, I'd love to see Linux dominate the Home User Market, but people cry out that Linux is failing and I think, where? Really? That's why the Desktop Community of Linux makes me shake my head. It's not the end-all of everything in Linux, not by any stretch of the imagination.
RE: Adam Williamson/Fedora
I have a question Adam.
I just found what was supposedly the RC4 release. It doesn't state RC4 anywhere in the filename like the other releases did. Would this be the final release image, and if not, could I update it easily to the final release?
Thanks for your time...
(BTW, I downloaded KDE4 64 release and although I'm still not convinced KDE4 is anywhere near KDE3, Fedora so far is the ONLY distro to completely get it right in my opinion. It's far more polished than Mandriva, IMPO.)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
288 • re 277 (by ritch on 2009-11-14 01:04:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
thanks for the info...
certainly explain's! partly, why im having so much trouble with x with the live cd of ubuntu
but still dosen't explain why im not having the same problem
in mandriva suse or sabayon
there must be more to the problem, or else these distros would misconfigure x as well.....
(why is it mainly buntu based distros that im having this problem with, what is it, they are doing different.. ? is the problem in debian ?)
never had a problem with fedora till the last one, hoping the new one will be good
i still say all the big distro should default to a basic vesa mode if x fails,
would solve a lot of time and head aches!
and make reconfiguring whats went wrong a whole lot easier!
again thank you for the info
289 • experince (by ritch on 2009-11-14 01:18:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
one point is my experience with mandriva is pretty perfect! and can't imagine it ever being particularly troublesome or not working
the exact opposite is true of my experience of ubuntu..
but i hear some people saying it the other way round
their experience is different and just as valid
we need to be careful not to pour scorn, on people who have extremely different experiences from us with the distro that works for us!
but the fact there are distros that work for us and some that don't is the worrying thing, if we are trying to influence windows users over to linux
if x fails we should get some basic graphic vesa mode as a default option, not a blank screen...the distros and the linux world should try and do the ground work to make x less of a pain in the arse!
because that's the common place a distro falls flat on its arse
290 • #288: X issues, VESA (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-14 02:11:44 GMT from United States)
i still say all the big distro should default to a basic vesa mode if x fails
That causes a black screen and a lockup on my Toshiba laptop. The Trident CyberBlade XPi chipset in that system is not VESA compliant. Using a VESA driver is not a cure-all. There are many systems, particularly older ones, where that would only make things worse.
Since I don't have an ATI chipset like yours and I haven't seen how X is configured by different distros on your system there is no way I can figure out why you are seeing what you are seeing. I'd bet dollars to donuts that these distros have more than one version of X and different releases of drivers so there are a lot of moving parts here.
Also, re: your #289, I don't see anyone who is "pouring out scorn". What I have said is that the results with a distro are very much hardware dependent. Earlier I believe it was you who claimed that one in three or four Ubuntu installs are "a dog's breakfast." I, for one, would love to know where you came up with that number and how large a sample you used. I don't believe failed installs are nearly that high a percentage. I also know, from experience, that most X configuration issues can be fixed and once that is done the distro will work properly for you for a good long time. The amount of time you've spent complaining here would have been better spent getting a fix from the Ubuntu community.
291 • ref-287 • RE: Sean 267 @ Adam/Fedora by Landor (by Verndog on 2009-11-14 03:16:08 GMT from United States)
That's what I am running and if you keep updates current it will become the final release. that's what I've done for Ubuntu from jaunty to karmic and continuing from karmic to lucid.
Although when I get my hands on both karmic and Fedora 12 final iso, I will do a new install, to get rid of all the cruff.
292 • User Agent Censorship for comments (by Fred on 2009-11-14 05:12:30 GMT from Germany)
Comments blocked with this user agent:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Comments accepted with this agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.13) Gecko/2009073022 Firefox/3.0.13
293 • Kaput Koala (by Anonymous on 2009-11-14 05:34:01 GMT from Germany)
When Ubuntu 9.10 boot-up prompts partition's password partition, it displays the input in PLAIN text! Say no more!
294 • re:180 and Adam Williamson's Fedora (by techqc on 2009-11-14 05:49:48 GMT from Indonesia)
"180 • @112 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-11-10 19:09:38 GMT from Canada)
"Adam Williamson: "Fedora 12 should be one of the highest quality Fedora releases for a while.
That is a funny statement. Does this mean that we can expect Fedora 13 (and 14, 15, 16) to be worse than Fedora 12?"
Er, heh, no, I meant 'for a while' retrospectively. As in it'll be better than all that crap we released before ;)"
Actually,
we must hold Fedora to higher standards now that Adam is there ;^)
295 • re 290 (by ritch on 2009-11-14 08:24:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
i know x is usually fixable, but if you boot into a blank screen how can you see to fix it?
i know there are key combination to bring up a terminal
(but does a window user no that)
but my comments are making the point if windows user are having as many problems as i am having on the range of hardware im having!! thats a problem
that genuinely 3 computer in 4 that i own works with sabayon, suse, mandriva etc BUT not ubuntu...... i know the amount of failure would be much lower than my 75% failure rate!
im not saying the real faliure rate is that high
im say MY faluire rate is that high but only with ubuntu, and that emphasise to me a major problem for me with that distro for me and potentialy for welcoming windows users into the linux fold
particuliarly if windows users are booting into a blank screen on there first experience
but i don't get your comments on vesa! all chipsets display a vesa setting
a standard since 1981 from mda to svga 3.0 1998
really any computer that couldn't display in a basic vga (640×480 / 16) vesa mode with a restricted colour pallete would not be powerful enough even to run puppy..
and a chipset that couldn't display a vesa mode would be unusable
and would never ever be capable in any practical form to run a linux distro and NO WAY posible in running ubuntu or any other distro or any other gui driven operating system at all
windows since 3.1 defaults to a vga mode before you install graphic drivers, because it works on EVERYTHING!
ive yet to see a chipset made in the last twenty years that couldn't
i have a trident 2d graphics chip on my old voodoo rush from 1997 and it most definetly can display in this mode AS CAN MY ATI 3650
AS CAN MY S3 GRAPHICS DX DECELIRATER FROM 1997
i am most certainly am not suggested anyone here is poring scorn on anyone!
but as i said my expirence with mandriva is faultles, but im wise enough to know that others may be having the kind of faults im having with ubuntu with a distro i personally find perfect.. and i should not then suggest thoughs fault can't be as bad as that, because my expirence has been positive with mandriva or suggest it must be a user error because my experience is good
i would like to politely suggest that you have got the wrong end of the stick ..
my comments are all to ask anyone if they are experiencing the same things as me,
if they know why im having a problem with my combination of hardware and thoughs that have, I HAVE THANKED for the imformation and a few have
plus ive said what i think is a possible vga solution if we are not to carry on the beflief that linux is only for geeks
which i feel will work with every graphics chipset manufactured from at least 1987 not as you put it "The amount of time you've spent complaining here would have been better spent getting a fix from the Ubuntu community."
im trying to find a reason for my woes with ubuntu, so i can get a more compliant range of hardware on my next hardware purchase, and cure my problems with ubuntu as i actually like the distro, so im not COMPLAINING! im trying to solve a problem and have a discussion about though failuire generaly in linux
so it is ludicrous to suggest that MANY systems could not display vesa
ALL GRAPHICAL SYSTEM'S DISPLAY A VESA MODE
all systems should be able to display in a vesa vga mode with a reduced color pallette TO BE MORE ACCURATE
and ubuntu loads in its live mode in vesa mode x-ga from 1992 (1024×768 / 65,536) generaly or svga (vbe) 3.0 from 1998 (1280×1024 / 16.7M)
SO ON THAT FACT YOUR TRIDENT IS DISPLAYING IN A VESA MODE OR YOU WOULD NOT BE SEEING A THING IN LIVE MODE!
(it maybe your trident graphics chip has a bug in one off its vesa mode probably svga vbe 1.x and maybe the reason you dont see trident chipsets anymore)
MINE ISN'T DISPLAYING, BECAUSE X IS MISCONFIGURING
please do reply, if you can be more constructive than your last post to me
i have just down loaded ubuntu ultimate edition, i generally find the vanilla buntu distros don't work that well for me!
but their tweeked varients are generally more succesfull!
so im keeping my fingers crossed with this one will work if not i'll wait till mint comes out!
mint generally allways has been to me ubuntu without the bugs
296 • RE: 292 User Agent Censorship for comments (by ladislav on 2009-11-14 08:32:42 GMT from Taiwan)
There has been an enormous amount of automated spam coming from different IP addresses, but always using that particular user-agent string, so I disabled the comment form for anybody with that string. With only about 12% of DW visitors on MSIE (most of which are probably search engines and search bots), I didn't think there was much harm in that. Just use another browser if you want to comment.
297 • re re 290 (by ritch on 2009-11-14 09:00:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
goggling your chipset does reveal it has a problem with vesa 2.0 mode and therefore is not vesa 2.0 compliant, but that does not mean it is not vesa compliant and should be able to default to a basic reduced pallette and resolution ie vga....16bit coluor and a 640x480 resolutuion
also linux does have a problem not just with 3d accelaration but with how deals with vesa modes
"The Linux kernel allows user configuration of VESA modes at boot time using the 'vga' kernel parameter. This parameter does not directly accept VESA video mode numbers; instead, a Linux video mode number must be calculated using the VESA number.
To calculate the Linux video mode number add 512. The resulting decimal value can be passed to the kernel in the form 'vga=XXX', where XXX is the decimal value, or in form 'vga=0xHHH', where HHH is the hexadecimal value. This calculation is not always accurate. It is a good starting point and you may have to do some experimenting to find the correct value."
hope this imformation is useful to you
298 • above (by ritch on 2009-11-14 09:17:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
correction on above im not saying linux is any way graphically broken compared with anything else the problem is more in user configuration, rather than any lack off ablity..espesially if they are not use to the command line
linux is a very capable graphic system
299 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-14 13:38:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref comments by ritch of UK.
From your analysis it would seem, at first sight anyway, to indicate that Ubuntu's packaged drivers are not as other distros, hence the probs you describe with what might be classed as incompatible hardware.
I am running a Dell Opti 280, P4 clocking 3GHZ into 2GB ram (but 1GB of DDR2 was added by me); this config was, I presume, the industry standard for "office" type installations about 5 yrs ago.
These machines have sata h/ds, so spares are not an issue in that respect...and if the PSUs go you can get replacements. If the motherboards go you might, rpt might, be able to get another from a cannibalised (sic) machine off the internet.
Mind you, they are as cheap as at around £100, so you could, if funds allow, keep buying machines and run a working example indefinitely. The only drawback is, I would surmise, even that machine must become obsolete ref available supported drivers.
Thus far this Dell has loaded, installed and booted all the Uxx from 8.04 (from when I got the machine) to date, which is not a clean install of 9.10, but a beta and subsequent updates.
So, if you are wanting a platform where everything just works out of the box, might I suggest you consider said Opti 280. From my POV it does seem rather a waste of time to try to get a system working which appears to have incompatible hardware vs software needs so to speak.
If you are doing it from the hobbyist viewpoint then fair enough, but at the risk of attracting adverse comments, that sort of exercise does seem to have the air of futility about it.
From your remarks I am wondering whether or not it might be deliberate policy by Canonical to keep the Uxx compatible with the newer "technology" available, and, if the latest edition/version happens to work on an "older" machine then that is more by luck than design.
Other folk may have arrived at a similar conclusion, but as ever, I am happy to be persuaded otherwise.
As an aside, I read that opinion is divided over the notion of Canonical's practice of bring out new edition of Uxx every six months; however it might be a way of driving the advance of Linux forward at a uniform rate.
I appreciate the arguments against in that Canonical are working like beavers to issue patches almost from day two of a release, but so what? There are a lot of pro comments so it can't be that bad a policy, can it?
What is a blow however, as noted earlier in the week, is that somehow MS seem to have very, very few probs with getting their OSs running on just about any contemporary, rpt contemporary, machine...with the possible exception of Vista...of course.
300 • openSUSE 11.2 has a lot of problems, too (by Michael Fpx on 2009-11-14 14:09:10 GMT from Canada)
I recently installed the latest version of openSUSE (11.2) on a virtual machine on my Mac, and I am very impressed with it. However, I had some minor problems with menu fonts and sound, which had me make a few trips to the openSUSE forums. The forums are very helpful and I got my problems solved, but I couldn't help but notice all the posts there with problems similar to those reported about Ubuntu (black screens, installer freezes, sound and video problems, etc.). Until I saw this, I was beginning to believe that maybe Ubuntu quality control had suffered relative to previous versions, despite my own success with 9.10 vanilla and Netbook Remix. Now I'm wondering if the problems aren't distro-independent or alternatively, that every release of every distro just has some problems on specific hardware.
301 • #297: VESA again (by Anonymous on 2009-11-14 16:03:58 GMT from United States)
@ritch: There were a lot of chipsets manufactured that do not comply with VESA. My Toshiba laptop dates from 2002. VESA at ANY mode will not work with those chipsets. It doesn't matter when the standard was adopted or what setting you use. VESA won't work. You need to use fbdev instead. So, no, your information wasn't particularly helpful and was stuff I already know. I do have a list of all the modesettings for X bookmarked, BTW.
You seem to have missed my main point from earlier. Most Windows users CANNOT and will not install an OS. They lack the skills necessary and aren't interested in learning them. DistroWatch is skewed toward the technically inclined computer hobbyist or professional. So, while you are correct that a Windows user will not diagnose and solve X problems in Linux that point is pretty much irrelevant. The ONLY way to bring those people over to Linux is with preloaded systems where everything works out of the box.
Right now, according to ABI Research, 32% of all netbooks are sold with Linux preinstalled, mostly Ubuntu LTS. About 10% of all desktops, laptops, notebooks, and netbooks are sold with Linux. See:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140343/Linux_s_share_of_netbooks_surging_not_sagging_says_analyst?source=rss_opsys
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/ABI-netbook-study-with-Jeffrey-Orr-interview/?kc=rss
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/ABI-netbook-study/
If you read the Jeffrey Orr interview you'll see why those numbers may be very conservative.
Anyway, my point is that preloads are the primary way to bring Windows users over to Linux.
Oh, and the easiest way to correct an X problem on a system that can't boot into X is to edit the grub or lilo command and boot to the command prompt, make your changes, and test by launching X manually with the startx command.
302 • @ 300 "every distro has problems" (by Henning Melgaard on 2009-11-14 17:06:34 GMT from Denmark)
You´re probably right. Good sensible point.
Has it to do with the new versions of the kernel?
Seems to me i generally get in trouble with distros using kernel 2.6.31 and later. ?? Exept I have no trouble with Open Suse 11.2 using 2.6.31.5...
303 • opensuse 11.2 (by cryszana on 2009-11-14 18:36:43 GMT from Romania)
No problems with 11.2 for me. Everything works fine and it's so fast.
304 • Kubuntu KDE3 remix (by Caraibes on 2009-11-14 18:57:35 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Out of curiosity (and for the benefit of a kde3 fan friend) I downloaded Kubuntu KDE3 remix. I did try (live) Kubuntu KDE4... But now running KDE3 on the same distro (live), I am just stunned on how KDE3 looks and feels so much better than KDE4... That said I am traditionally a Gnome user, sometimes Fluxbox, and those days, Xfce with Xubuntu...
But guys... Give it a spin... The KDE3 remix is like a breathe of fresh air after that whole KDE4 thing... There should definitely be a team to keep maintaining it in the future...
I am posting from the KDE3 remix...
305 • distrowatch (by Xtyn on 2009-11-14 19:34:10 GMT from Germany)
There have been a few days since distrowatch.com doesn't load for me. I think it started not to load on the 11th. It doesn't load at all, I thought the server was down.
I searched for a mirror and distrowatch.serve-you.net worked fine. The odd thing was that every day there were more comments. No comment was about distrowatch problems so I realised it was me.
Well, I'm behind a proxy right now, so it seems it's an IP problem.
306 • Karmic compaints (by GoldNugget on 2009-11-14 22:29:09 GMT from United States)
Every release of Ubuntu is met with cries of 'Oh no, this is the worst release ever! It broke my ! I loved which always worked fine for me!" Hardy was especially criticized because it was a LTS version and the imminent demise of Ubuntu was predicted and continues to be predicted with each release. Remember, your beloved stable version was once a scary and slightly buggy new release.
This is not to dismiss people who have problems with this release. I did not. I performed several installs on various hardware configurations and most went without a hitch. The problems I did have were small and easily fixed. Patience is a good rule with new releases...wait a month or so if you cannot tolerate breakage and let the other users find the bugs.
Thanks again to FOSS developers who make Ubuntu and all its Linux siblings possible.
307 • @ 306 (by Henning Melgaard on 2009-11-14 23:09:28 GMT from Denmark)
" Patience is a good rule with new releases...wait a month or so if you cannot tolerate breakage and let the other users find the bugs. "
This is a statement I have heard more than a few times. But tell me one thing : What is the purpose of having alpha, beta and RC versions of a distribution, when you still have to keep away from the final release for the first month?
Basically, this is the same as considering the final release as some kind of RC2. And why? To trick average users into downloading and using it? Because everyone knows that the average useer would not install it if it was called alpha, beta or RC? And we need more people to test it to find the remaining bugs? Come on....
308 • Credit should go to does that deserve it (by Naibed on 2009-11-14 23:26:04 GMT from Australia)
>>Thanks again to FOSS developers who make Ubuntu and all its Linux siblings possible.<<
One should NOT FORGET that behind much of the unnamed "FOSS" developers stand the most important contributors to Linux progress - Red Hat, Novell, IBM, Intel, Mozilla, Google, and many other large corporations. Ubuntu's (Canonical's) contribution to Linux development is minuscule in comparison to the real pioneers of the industry and credit to should go to those that deserve (earn) it.
Also remember that Ubuntu is BASED on DEBIAN!
309 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-11-15 00:16:53 GMT from United States)
"Also remember that Ubuntu is BASED on DEBIAN!"
That's kind of like seeing a movie that states based on a true novel, but the movie doesn't even resemble the novel....neither does Ubuntu resemble Debian.
310 • @308 Reading comprehension (by Untitled on 2009-11-15 09:01:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Thanks again to FOSS developers who make Ubuntu and all its Linux siblings possible"
does not equate to:
"Thanks again to Ubuntu developers who make FOSS possible".
Just a thought...
311 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-15 10:31:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref comments of the chicken and egg scenario on the Uxx issues.
If Canonical, under the guise of Ubuntu et al is, allegedly, not doing as much as other developers, as we are told again, repeatedly, ad nauseum...then it begs the question why is it the best known distro outside Linuxland?
It scores very well on the hitometer rankings week after week. It has more clones than any other distro and by and large is well supported. It is more likely to be the alternative OS for a lappy (Mac exclude possibly) in the choice stakes at your local computer shop/store.
Uxx is designed to be easy to install and operate...in fact you might say it does its best to be all things to all men (and women, lol. note anti-flame insurance). It is one of the first, AFAIK, to offer a Cloud "option". (Admittedly this is young science at present and somebody might do it better.)
It produces more versions/releases than any other distro and then gets caned for not doing as much. I wonder if some folk...a lot of folk, do realise it is the best candidate for replacing MS on the planet's computers, apart from the plethora of "nationally" sponsored distros of course.
Sounds to me more like a touch of the green eye from the ringside.
312 • Happy birthday to you ! ! ! (by NippoNoob on 2009-11-15 11:13:28 GMT from Brazil)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Millions of PCLinuxOS lovers are glad to know that the most newbie-friendly UNIX-like OS in the world is now celebrating its sixth birthday on October 24, 2009.
Thank you very much, Mr. Bill Reynolds. You are the man ! ! !
http://www.pclosmag.com/html/Issues/200910/page01.html
Who the heck needs Ubuntu?
313 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-15 11:31:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #312
Well, young NippoNoob of Brazil, some of the folk who might not be able to get PCLinuxOS to install on their machines for a start.
And, a few folk who need 24/7 support for their business ventures...
And, a few manufacturers who want a large corporate entity behind any OS they happen to take their machines to market with.
That's who.
314 • Re: 311 (by Oncle Jean on 2009-11-15 11:53:01 GMT from Canada)
Some Linux users I know don't like Microsoft because "they produce systems that are not very good but popular only because there's a large corporation behind to promote their visibility". Sorry to ask this but when I read all your comments here, I have to: what's the difference between Windows and Ubuntu ? Are we, Linux users, creating a world that's like the one we once wanted to leave ??? I suspect the answer to this question is "yes". C'est la vie...
315 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-15 12:35:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref # 314
Spot on OJ, that's exactly what the majority of folk want in a computer, an OS which just works and has none of the associated problems, such as viruses, trojans, worms, rootkits, you name it they don't want it, and did I forget to mention free as...
Gone are the days of GNULinux users being the elite amongst computer users...who don't need or want a GUI. Frankly, unless you are into "computering"as a hobby why would you want to bother with all the messing around you might have to do just to get an OS working properly? Some folk have work to do and the computer is merely a tool.
It may have escaped your notice but distros and associated projects in the educational line, say, are being rolled out across the planet in not inconsiderable numbers/locations all the time. You need only google if you are that interested. LB does include some related copy on this website.
In other words, the hobbyists have been sidelined by, as you so rightly allude to, the big corporations, or, nationally sponsored entities, who want as little to do with having to pay for commercial software as possible...especially from MS who might introduce who knows how many "backdoors" into their code...for who knows what reasons.
Even now MS are able to control certain games consoles for what they term, unilaterally I might add, infringement on the terms of licence...what in EVERY country, without any challenge?
Just because MS and Mac have been the dominant OSs thus far does not establish a precedent does it? GNULinux is not the especial preserve of the hobbyist and will forever remain so, is it? Why on earth should it be anyway?
GNULinux is no longer a hobbyist's toy,it is simply an alternative tool, to be employed by anyone for whatever reason the world over.
316 • Mandriva Free 2010 (by abarbarian on 2009-11-15 13:30:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
You can also get Mandriva 2010 Free as a Dual Arch CD .iso from here.
http://torrent.mandriva.com/public/2010.0/
Usefull for those folk who want a lighter os.
I'm posting my experiences with this version over at,
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3923962.php
Comments and help with hicupps always apreciated. :-)
317 • Just relax and smile... (by NippoNoob on 2009-11-15 14:51:15 GMT from Brazil)
Hey guys and gals, look at Linus Torvalds in front of a Win7 point-of-sale in Japan:
http://www.pclosmag.com/html/Issues/200911/page18.html
He's making fun of Microsoft, as always... So amusing!
Right now, I'm showcasing Linux to a couple of newcomers, while reading some articles at PCLinuxOS Magazine and coming back here from time to time.
They are loving DWW. One of them asked: "Why Ubuntu is so buggy?" And I answered: "Because it's not PCLinuxOS, nor SimplyMEPIS, nor Dreamlinux, nor RHEL/CentOS/Scientific, nor VectorLinux, nor any other REALLY STABLE Linux distro with a reputation to preserve. It's just yet another company's adventure with the sole goal of making profit out of a free OS."
BTW, Ene Dene (from Croatia) is right: Debian Stable for LTS releases would be a much clever choice than the Testing branch. For Server Edition, it's mandatory!
318 • VESA RE#295 (by Anonymous on 2009-11-15 17:57:31 GMT from United States)
I think you may mean 1991 (not 1981).
In 1981 PC's just were barely realised.
I have here one of my old video cards, an ISA bus using CHIPS (chipset maker)
which has 1986 in many places visible on the board and chips.
This is either a CGA or maybe an EGA video card.
I used to use this and other older cards with Slackware and Red Hat Linux.
I do not know if CGA or EGA was part of the VESA standard.
I do know that I was able to use them with XFREE86
back when one had to edit the Xconfig by hand or use that command line script.
That is when I was using a i386 @ 16Mhz w 2Meg of RAM and swap.
A 200Mbyte hard drive was 80% empty too.
Now everything is Ghz CPU, Gbyte RAM, Tbyte HD,XYZ super-fantastic VGA...
I really didn't go VGA untill I aquired an i486 VL-bus mother board and
put a Tseng 2Meg video card on it, this was many years later.
Now I have 512M RAM and Nvidia 4000 AGP video, still not current by
the chatter going on here though.
Thanks DistroWatch!
319 • MirBSD (by MirOS on 2009-11-15 18:46:45 GMT from Hungary)
For Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
A new http://www.mirbsd.org MirOS (i386 only) snapshot have been made!
Announcement:
http://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10_e20091115-tg-g10035.htm#e20091115-tg-g10035_wlog-10
320 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-15 19:30:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #317
Amusing snap of LT...but it's not sarcasm you know...he's just in on the joke with his mates.
Now, NN, If you are showcasing Linux to two of your mates, how come they asked you why Ubuntu so buggy, allegedly, hmm...how would they know if they are new guys/girls? It may be you have not yet mastered how to use the software?
And what's all this nonsense about making money out of free software? Canonical makes money from providing support on a commercial basis to commercial entities. I suggest you read up on on this sort of stuff before you come out with such silly ideas. Here is a link to help you get started:
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/services
You will note Canonical provide other services such as training in several different countries and languages, not just engineering support. All this is a commercial enterprise...employing staff or contractors around the planet.
Someone has to pay for the staff salaries and associated costs, or did you imagine M. Shuttleworth simply pays for it out the kindness of his heart?
Nobody gives a monkies if you are a PCLinuxOS afficionado, or if you take potshots at Ubuntu, or any of the others you mentioned, but coming out with such patent nonsense is hardly the way to promulgate GNULinux to the planet.
You asked a question in #312, got a suitable response in #313...and you're still making elementary mistakes...come to that how do you KNOW there are millions of PCLinuxOS users out there? More hyperbole i suppose.
So a word of advice, if only to stop you looking silly to your mates, please do some research before you rubbish things you don't know too much about.
Everyone has to learn stuff so don't feel too bad about it...it's the applying the knowledge which is the tricky bit.
Lastly, I have tried PCLinuxOS and thought it was perfectly acceptable...I simply prefer to use a better supported distro for my computering needs.
321 • OpenSuse 11.2 (by Vukota on 2009-11-15 19:33:40 GMT from United States)
Hope in a next DW weekly, we'll be able to read about OpenSuse 11.2.
I am curious to see what are the first experiences and see if it is a worthy upgrade.
So far Ubunt is not the right path according to the number of complaints, Mandriva 2010 maybe, if it just had all the bells and whistles.
Fedora may be right path (since Adam is now there ;-)) though I don't see them getting away from being too conservative.
I would like to get some good comparative reports, so I don't have to waist my time and learn on my mistakes. ;-)
322 • Wow! "forest" made one more PCLinuxOS user! (by NippoNoob on 2009-11-15 22:14:55 GMT from Brazil)
>"Now, NN, If you are showcasing Linux to two of your mates, how come they asked you why Ubuntu so buggy, allegedly, hmm...how would they know if they are new guys/girls?"
__ They aren't my mates. But they are here in my own house to see Linux in action. And they know that Ubuntu is buggy because they are reading this thead full of people saying that Ubuntu sucks... Isn't it so obvious?
>"...It may be you have not yet mastered how to use the software?"
I myself installed Ubuntu and MANY other distros with great success, and I exhaustively tested them. I know how to master Ubuntu, Dreamlinux XFCE (my distro of choice), PCLinuxOS GNOME (the one I recommend for newcomers), SimplyMEPIS (very good KDE desktop), etc, etc., etc. BTW, I still use Damn Small Linux 4.4.10 (my first distro ever) just for online banking in a special "frugal install".
>"Nobody gives a monkies if you are a PCLinuxOS afficionado, or if you take potshots at Ubuntu, or any of the others you mentioned, but coming out with such patent nonsense is hardly the way to promulgate GNULinux to the planet."
>My "nonsense" is opening the eyes of many people here in Brazil. They get confused about so many distros, and then they ask me what to try. I always suggest some excellent distros, not Ubuntu or any other beta tester's distro. Thus many people care about my opinion. BTW, even my son's Chemistry teacher consulted me before he settled on SimplyMEPIS. (Not a bad choice!)
>"You asked a question in #312, got a suitable response in #313"
__ The only powerful, well established, large corporation in the Linux world is Red Hat. Canonical is just an adventure!
>"...and you're still making elementary mistakes...come to that how do you KNOW there are millions of PCLinuxOS users out there? More hyperbole i suppose."
__ Of course it's an hyperbolic way of speaking. There aren't so many PCLinuxOS lovers... YET.
>"So a word of advice, if only to stop you looking silly to your mates, please do some research before you rubbish things you don't know too much about."
__ I have bad news to you: My "mates" said that YOU is the silly guy here. They simply LOVED my method of introducing them to Linux. I went to their homes and installed a Linux system in their PC's explaining each and every step, from partitioning to Internet connection configuration. It definitely didn't make me look "silly". All I've heard from them are stuff like this: "Thanks a lot for your help. I promise I'll try to learn all I can about Linux." (Solidarity and friendship is a tradition in Brazil.)
>"Lastly, I have tried PCLinuxOS and thought it was perfectly acceptable...I simply prefer to use a better supported distro for my computering needs."
__ "Perfectly acceptable?" PCLinuxOS is FANTASTIC... I think the hell will freeze before I can find a better distro! Now I understand why their fans call it "the distro hopper stopper". (BTW, I'll keep using Dreamlinux as my main distro just because I'm crazy for XFCE.)
And last but not least, I now let Rafael (one of my "mates") write a special message to you, forest:
"Cara, um mané como você só podia mesmo ser usuário de Ubuntu ou de outra porcaria qualquer. Isso me ajudou a decidir. Vou largar o Ruindows XP e adotar o PCLinuxOS GNOME."
(Please ask a Portuguese speaking guy/gal to translate it. But I can assure you that YOUR previous post have made one more PCLinuxOS lover... THANK YOU VERY MUCH for simplifying my job ! ! !)
323 • The Joy of Sid (by FYI on 2009-11-16 00:16:54 GMT from Australia)
Health Check: Ubuntu and Debian's special relationship
[...]
The Joy of Sid
Mark Shuttleworth Shuttleworth was himself a Debian Developer and had been the maintainer of Debian's implementation of Apache. He had even considered standing for election as Debian leader as a means for pushing for more frequent releases of Debian. Not surprisingly the core development team of Ubuntu consisted of a number of Debian and ex-Debian Developers, and Ubuntu is based on a snapshot of the "unstable" tree of Debian, which is merged into Ubuntu's current code release every six months.
Ubuntu is Debian unstable with some of the rough edges smoothed over, some security features deprecated and some enhanced, the implementation of proprietary blobs made easier, a bit of polish, a different theme, and a lot less packages. Ubuntu is a clean and polished experience for those new to GNU/Linux, (although the 'release often release early' philosophy it has taken from other free software projects has created occasional stability issues). The success of Ubuntu is a testimony both to the marketing and packaging of Canonical, Ubuntu's holding company, and to the ongoing application and innovation of the Debian community whose work lies at the core of every release of Ubuntu.
[....]
http://www.h-online.com/
324 • No subject (by forest on 2009-11-16 00:31:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #322
Ref your views, you are entitled to your opinion.
If you choose to use PCLinuxOS then nobody will be bothered in the slightest. If your mates, or just acquaintances, or even Chemistry teacher choose to be guided by you then fair enough...for the moment.
I presume you will have heard the saying, "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is King?" At the moment the only details these folk know about GNULinux is what you choose to tell them.
However, what you might discover, as might they, once your "pupils" have got more familiar with GNULinux, as a whole, other distros might be more to their taste. Perhaps they might choose to google for more info on your own home developed Brazilian distros? (see below)
I have no idea what Rafael said, apart from a reference to XP and Gnome; I'm sure it was very telling, but naturally I will make allowances for him being a novice or tyro in Linuxland, he can hardly be expected to give an opinion on a distro he has never tried...on his own machine.
Whether or not RedHat is the biggest player in town is neither here nor there, I simply directed you to a website in order for you to have a look at Canonical's services. )
I am intrigued why you have not considered distros from your own country such as found here:
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=All&origin=Brazil&basedon=All&desktop=All&architecture=All&status=Active
I am interested, ignoring any difference of opinion we might have, why the Chemistry teacher decided not to use one of your own country's distros, especially for education; sounds like a splendid project:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2824724304.html
or a later version:
http://linuxeducacional.com/
(You will note I have had the web page translated, ahem, into "Brazilian" Portuguese purely for Rafael's benefit, I hopes he appreciates the enormous amount of effort I had to put in...)
325 • Hey, forest (by jake on 2009-11-16 01:01:12 GMT from United States)
Stop feeding the troll. Ta.
Note to the troll's supposed "mates" (and anyone else still following this discussion): The shriller that someone is regarding the distro of their choice, the chances of them being knowledgeable about linux in general diminish almost exponentially. Try the top 10-20 (or even the top 50-100) distros listed at this site for yourself. It's not all that difficult.
There is no overall "best" distro, just best for the individual at any particular time.
326 • re237 301 and 318 (by ritch at 2009-11-16 01:55:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
301# thank you for the links ! they will make good reading...
i maybe wrong and it looks like your knowledge of vesa modes is greater than mine... but i thought every single graphical chipset produced in the last twenty years ran in a basic vesa mode like vga 640x480 at say 16 bit colour depth or svga 800x600 because the windows installer system and safe mode operated at such a level
i may be wrong and it isn't a vesa mode! though it does operate at the same resolution and color depth
my point was not about vesa its self
but if linux is to be more reliable and break through as a consumer desktop..and be more useable to linux users
surely linux should default to such a safe low level graphical mode, as windows does if anything goes wrong
and suerly every graphics chipset ever in production supports the low level graphical mode that windows uses for safe mode..
because it would be commercial suicide not to support it and a rather unusable chip......if it didn't support windows
why not use this standard to default to in linux as well, if x goes wrong?
ive never seen this particular problem in windows (plenty of other faults though) and ive used windows since 3.1 (and atari st's before that and a msx before that)
maybe linux should be stealing some off the things windows does do well, because windows is certainly stealing ideas from linux
but that was basicly my point if x in linux can be made to default to such a mode, if it is a vesa mode or otherwise it would massively fix the failurie rates and make it infinetly more useable to the less technical user and more importantly windows users who are thinking of migrating to linux
think more linux distros should take a leaf from mepis book it offers a large choice of graphical modes, so no matter what your hardware you can get the live cd up and running! brillant, just brillant, only thing i don't like is no kde 4 as yet, but they say the next release will be kde4
318# this is something i definetly know, the first vesa standard was written for ibm in 1981 it was extremly basic way below vga (something like 80x60 and in only black and white or two colours) and called ma or something
(was taught about the vesa standard in high school in 1986 so definetly long before 91) and was using the famous bbc micros for lessons)
think your thinking of the first svga vesa modes because i think vga came out as a standard sometime in the late eighties though (i may be wrong and vga is 1991 though im sure svga was 91)
i know the last vesa 3.0 standards came out in 1998
i know the first and the last dates but in between is a bit sketchy
and yes cga and ega were part of the vesa standards
ohh and id like to say thank you to (237#) who suggested av linux to me.. to solve my problem in getting round ubuntu studio not working for me!
its a nice wee functional distro and doing the job nicely
327 • Ubuntu 9.10 (by Dave on 2009-11-16 02:24:44 GMT from United States)
Personally, I found Ubuntu 9.10 a big disappointment. Incorporating grub 2.0 beta in a finished product hardly justifies explanation but the fatter foot print and, for me anyway, slower load times was enough to move me back to 9.04.
I like 9.04. It's not flashy like 9.10 but very stable and I've been very happy with it. I do like the Evolution .pst importer. Wish it was on the 9.04 release. I also didn't like the move away from command line software such as gcc.
In the end, I'll wait for version 10.
328 • Video standards (by RollMeAway on 2009-11-16 03:18:27 GMT from United States)
So you don't have to guess:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVGA
329 • Linux users (by Anonymous on 2009-11-16 03:41:29 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu claims over 8 million users. Mandriva claims over 3 million usrs. I asked where did you come up with those numbers? They said we pulled them out of our ass.
Vector Linux now enjoyed by billions of users worldwide.
330 • Video standard timeline (by Anonymous on 2009-11-16 04:03:40 GMT from United States)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_display_interfaces
Is Wikipedia accurate?
331 • Ubuntu still the king! (by King George on 2009-11-16 04:47:56 GMT from United States)
"__ They aren't my mates. But they are here in my own house to see Linux in action. And they know that Ubuntu is buggy because they are reading this thead full of people saying that Ubuntu sucks... Isn't it so obvious?"
Did you cover their eyes when the rest of us posted positive results!?
332 • Billion of users? :) (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-11-16 06:22:59 GMT from United States)
[quote]Vector Linux now enjoyed by billions of users worldwide.[/quote]
LOL. I'll have to show this to some of the devs over there. They should get a good laugh out of this. ...and I always thought Vector was under-appreciated. I guess I was wrong :)
I have nothing but good to say about Mandiva 2010 and Ubuntu 9.10. On my hardware they both just work. Yes, I wrote a fairly negative review of Mandriva 2009.1. That was then and this is now. IME all the major distros have had a substandard release now and again. This time Mandriva and Ubuntu fixed a lot of outstanding problems and, at least on my hardware, got it right. That's more than I can say for OpenSUSE 11.2, unfortunately.
Number of Comments: 332
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