Ubuntu Wonderful? [LWN.net]

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 24, 2008 22:21 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (2 responses)

> Has anyone ever written a review of Ubuntu that wasn't glowing?

Sure, I've seen plenty of negative reviews. "Ubuntu didn't work on my hardware", "it isn't
ready for the desktop", etc. Sometimes the complaints are valid, sometimes not.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 25, 2008 0:48 UTC (Tue) by larryn (guest, #3457) [Link] (1 responses)

Here are the valid ones

havp start-up script is broken (someone already reported this and last I checked it was still
not fixed).

Ubuntu could never get my resolution right 1600x1040+nVidia card. Fedora and openSUSE has no
issue.

havp unmaintained

Posted Mar 25, 2008 5:44 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Looks fixed to me:

http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/havp/+bug/94552

havp looks unmaintained in Debian, perhaps you would like to adopt it?

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 25, 2008 0:31 UTC (Tue) by bdw (guest, #16047) [Link]

I purchased a laptop with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled on it lastyear from Rcubed Tech and it's
anything but astroturf.  I've never had a serious problem with it and it's definitely worth
the glowing reviews.

Definitely try the LiveCD. :)

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 25, 2008 22:09 UTC (Tue) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

There are some non-glowing reviews, some people prefer PCLinuxOS or MEPIS or whatever -
however, Ubuntu is really pretty good these days, what with its combination of focusing on
usability with a Debian-derived core using APT.  Hardy is the first version of Ubuntu that
recognised the right graphics card to use in my PC (ignoring the built in i810), configured
maximum resolution automatically, and generally 'just worked' (although there was a boot
problem on the Live CD initially - fixed by editing boot options from LiveCD menu.)

I have been using Ubuntu (actually Kubuntu) since Breezy and it's really come a long way - no
more tweaking with fonts and many other details, most things really do work out of the box.
However, the nicest thing is simply the huge repository of packages that work well - it's very
quick to go from the 'command not found' error (which points you to the package name in
Ubuntu) to installing the package.

It runs well on rather old hardware, particularly with the amazingly fast Firefox 3 - e.g. a
Pentium III 700 MHz/512 MB is very usable these days, and with Xubuntu I can use a PIII laptop
with just 192 MB RAM.  Unfortunately this removes one of the reasons to upgrade, but
fortunately Compiz (which also worked out of the box on my old ATI 9250) is a good incentive
...

The key thing for me is that one Linux distro or another succeeds massively - it doesn't
really matter long term if it is Ubuntu or not, but having one really popular distro that
works well for newbies means that hardware vendors and maybe even commercial app vendors will
start taking Linux seriously.  Hardware support is highly cross-distro, and will help all
distros, so even if you don't like Ubuntu it's good that it is doing so well.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:09 UTC (Wed) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (6 responses)

Here is something negative for you ...

There are serious upgrade bugs outstanding and some of them haven't been fixed for a couple of
releases. 

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdebase/+bug/11...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/154195

So, if I am counting correctly, this will be the third release that will go out with known
upgrade problems. Of course the situation is exasperated by having a new release every 6
months.

None of the happy reviewers used it long enough to have to go through an upgrade did they ?

While I do like Kubuntu and use it on my laptop, I have wasted hours on every single upgrade
dealing with these bugs. An "ordinary" user would not be able to deal with it.

A couple of Kubuntu machines in our office are already a release behind (because nobody has
the time to deal with the broken upgrade). We are not using them for anything important, but
the opinion that Ubuntu (and by inference Linux) is unstable and unmaintainable has spread
through some of my coworkers.

The fallout is that now I would never consider shelling any money to Canonical for support.
Perhaps after the first upgrade, but not after having the same bug for several consecutive
releases.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 10:50 UTC (Wed) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] (4 responses)

> We are not using them for anything important, but the opinion that 
Ubuntu (and by inference Linux) is unstable and unmaintainable has spread 
through some of my coworkers.

What they are comparing it against?  Upgrading Windows from XP to Vista 
perhaps?  Without re-installing? I don't use Windows, is that even 
possible?

If you want stable, you should only upgrade between stable (in Ubuntu case 
LTS) versions and just do security updates for them.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 15:42 UTC (Wed) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (2 responses)

Truth be said, I haven't had the dubious pleasure of installing Vista or upgrading to it.
Fortunately my involvement with Windows ended in the XP days :-) Anyway, you don't have to
upgrade Windows XP to Vista every 6 months ... So I think my coworkers are comparing Ubuntu
upgrades to installing a Windows service pack.

While LTS is a good idea, it is in theory only. The current LTS (6.06) is just too impractical
for desktop use, especially when the competition is the beloved Windows XP. In practice one is
much better off using Debian Etch instead of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. We use Etch on our development
machines (our development is 100% Linux based).

8.04 LTS is probably a much more attractive and viable version, but the important thing is
that our confidence in Ubuntu has already been destroyed.

I think that for our next "Linux in the office experiment" we will simply stick to the next
release of Debian. There is something to be said for having the same OS on the development and
"office" machines.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 19:07 UTC (Wed) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] (1 responses)

> Truth be said, I haven't had the dubious pleasure of installing Vista or 
upgrading to it. Fortunately my involvement with Windows ended in the XP 
days :-) Anyway, you don't have to upgrade Windows XP to Vista every 6 
months ... So I think my coworkers are comparing Ubuntu upgrades to 
installing a Windows service pack.

I had understood that service packs are mainly security updates, so they 
would be closer to single Linux release security updates than upgrading to 
a new release...?


> In practice one is much better off using Debian Etch instead of Ubuntu 
6.06 LTS. We use Etch on our development machines (our development is 100% 
Linux based).

I feel the same, Etch picked better time for the release in regards to 
Desktop versions etc.


> 8.04 LTS is probably a much more attractive and viable version, but the 
important thing is that our confidence in Ubuntu has already been 
destroyed.

Well, I would think anything changing things that fast would have some 
quality control issues.  I think the 6-monthly Ubuntu releases could be 
considered "unstable" ones although Canonical doesn't exactly advertise 
them as such.  Let's hope their process gets this new LTS release good 
enough quality (and there's more response to bugs in their BTS).

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 27, 2008 6:58 UTC (Thu) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

Windows service packs are not just security updates (those come out in monthly patches) - they
do roll these up, but they also include many other bug fixes and some new features, e.g.
Windows XP SP2 included many IE features, a new firewall, improved WiFi/Bluetooth, etc.  See
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/features.mspx 

So I think it's reasonable to compare an Ubuntu release with a Windows service pack, except
that the Ubuntu release will typically upgrade many bundled applications to new versions, and
even change them to alternative versions in some cases, as well as providing new system
features.

Debian is great for servers but I would not want to have to customize it for a desktop user
population, unless they are Linux developers who will just do this for themselves.  Ubuntu is
definitely easier to install than Windows (as long as WiFi is supported), since you don't
usually have to install any third party drivers as with Windows.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 30, 2008 17:51 UTC (Sun) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]

> What they are comparing it against?  Upgrading Windows from XP to Vista
> perhaps?  Without re-installing? I don't use Windows, is that even
> possible?

I can't speak for Vista, having never used it, but for the other Windows versions I have
upgraded without a reinstall.  I've gone from NT to 2000 and 2000 to XP without any problems.
I don't remember if I ever tried upgrading from 98 to 2000 or not.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 17:44 UTC (Wed) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

These seem to be mostly Kubuntu related - I use Kubuntu myself and like it, but it's likely
that Kubuntu upgrades aren't so widely tested or fixed.  Ubuntu certainly seems to be a bit
more polished, though I prefer Kubuntu generally.

I think it's also a question of priorities - an upgrade bug that breaks someone's wireless
card or other hardware is much more serious than (from one of your examples) something that
breaks Konqueror, particularly if there's a simple-ish workaround.  All upgrade bugs should be
fixed, but there's only so much development time available, so I guess the Ubuntu/Kubuntu
teams focus on the most critical bugs.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 1:09 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

It is really fantastic for Windows and new users. It is quite solid for Linux users (on sufficient hardware). Other distributions (Debian, Gentoo) provide far more control but they require correspondingly more effort to exercise it; Ubuntu is a sweet spot on this curve.

Me, I always return to the one true distro at some point. But the detours are always worth it.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 5:01 UTC (Wed) by mbottrell (guest, #43008) [Link] (2 responses)

Sure read up Mary Gardiner's review of the Ubuntu 8.04 release.. and some of the nasty bugs
still present.

http://puzzling.org/logs/thoughts/2008/March/26/hardy-beta

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 17:50 UTC (Wed) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (1 responses)

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy is still beta, so some bugs are allowed... I didn't read through all of
them, but this one is well known and NOT an Ubuntu or even a Linux bug really -
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/59695 - it's the 'laptop mode causing high number of hard disk
load/unload cycles', which can be due to the BIOS, default drive configuration, etc, as well
as due to laptop mode (disabled by default in Ubuntu).  

See
http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/ubuntu-is-not...
- this is not a simple 'Ubuntu is broken' type problem. Fixing it involves not just disabling
laptop mode but also avoiding too-frequent HD wakeups on laptops, including setting the commit
interval on ext3 to something higher than 5 seconds - there are various articles out there on
how to do this.

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 19:18 UTC (Wed) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

Having read more of that bug report re excessive HD load/unload cycles - the fix(es) are
complex, as I thought, and probably involve (some) hard drive firmware versions and also some
Linux/Ubuntu code.  There is no consistent story on this - e.g. some people say that Windows
XP has this bug, other say that it doesn't.  

Most likely there are multiple factors causing the unwanted hard drive behaviour.  In any case
there are clear workarounds using hdparm, and suitable scripts for ACPI wakeup etc, and some
people are reporting that Hardy has fixed this problem on systems that had the problem with
Gutsy.