“It’s out love for Ubuntu that I’m being so harsh in this review. Look where we’re at — 7.04, a number of significant releases since 4.10 Warty three years ago — and it still can’t manage the display properly. I had great expectations for 7.04, and unfortunately they’re not all met. If you’re a fanboy, don’t read on, because I’ll shatter your fragile world.” More at APCMag.
What’s Wrong with Ubuntu 7.04
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Like the author I’d like to define myself as a “distro whore” and I have yet to find the perfect one to settle with although lately I am finding myself going back to the one distro thats just plain “Great”: Slackware!
While Ubuntu has had miraculous success thus far its still comes with lots of faults.
1) that darn “Brown” look is just lame. — i know you can change it but isnt it time for a change?
2) the installer is too simple and while thats great for newcomers its just lacking.
3) sudo this and sudo that. while sudo is great its still a better idea to have the root account enabled. can anyone say “linspire”?
4) the fonts aren’t set antialised. they’re also too large to look right. they could at least tweak the size a bit.
+more
I myself despise the whole Ubuntu line and am sick and tired of every review on the net praising it and calling it the “hacker OS”.
Visit youtube.com and make a search for “Linux”. You’ll end up with pages upon pages of videos with Ubuntu fans.
If you use Ubuntu then thats great.
I wont and thats just fine.
While there are some reasons to be critical of the latest Ubuntu release (moreso, apparently, if you’re a NVIDIA user), the ones you give all strike me as rather weak.
That’s part of their branding, and I myself think it looks rather good. That said, it’s not the color scheme I particularly use, but I think it’s a good default. In any case, that’s the kind of thing that users personalize right away, so any default color scheme will ultimately turn off some people.
Seriously, if this was a real issue with Ubuntu, then it’d be the perfect OS.
While a “advanced” install option with more granularity would also be good, I think it fits its purpose pretty well as it is. I personally don’t miss the detailed installs of Mandriva when Installing Ubuntu.
I disagree…why is it better to have the root account enabled for a desktop PC? I didn’t like sudo at first, but I’m fine with it now. I think it’s just a matter of personal preference, and it’s trivial to add.
The fonts *are* antialiased…you may want to play with the hinting in Font Properties to get them to your liking (personally I like to turn it off), but they are definitely anti-aliased by default.
That said, it seems that more people than usual have had troubles with Feisty Fawn. It works great on my machine, but some Nvidia users have signaled stability problems. It’s still a great distro, but as a whole it seems that Edgy was a bit more polished (from a QA point of view) when it came out.
1) that darn “Brown” look is just lame. — i know you can change it but isnt it time for a change?
You put this reason as number one.. you must really have to stretch for reasons to hate Ubuntu when you put that you don’t like the incredibly easily changed color scheme as your number one reason.
2) the installer is too simple and while thats great for newcomers its just lacking.
Umm.. Use the alternate installer on expert mode.
3) sudo this and sudo that. while sudo is great its still a better idea to have the root account enabled. can anyone say “linspire”?
This completely falls apart… Ubuntu doesn’t use root the same way Linspire does.. with linspire, the ONLY account is root by default. With Ubuntu, there is no root password by default. I fail to see the comparison.
I always hear people complain about the fact that there is no root account, which I’ve never understood. The only thing you can’t do without a root password is log in directly as root. And that can be fixed with a single command. Once again, a stupid reason to hate a distro.
4) the fonts aren’t set antialised. they’re also too large to look right. they could at least tweak the size a bit.
Fonts aren’t anti-aliased? Huh? That it just untrue.
As far as size, in Ubuntu the fonts are the default GNOME size. I don’t understand how that is a problem with Ubuntu.
You can hate Ubuntu if you want, I don’t care.. but at least come up with some good reasons to hate it.
Ubuntu has its strengths and weaknesses like any other distro, but people see all of its strengths and use them as justifications for why the weaknesses are unacceptable “in this day and age.” Sure, they’re unacceptable, but for some reason Ubuntu is held to the fire for its weaknesses while other distros aren’t held to the same standard.
No other Linux distribution makes it as easy to find and install additional packages. Only its derivatives and Debian come close. Note that I am talking about installing packages built for your release of Ubuntu, not updating from external sources. No other Linux distribution has a community nearly as strong as Ubuntu’s. Only Gentoo came close, and not so much anymore. No other Linux distribution sees its mandate to change the face of the software industry as clearly as does Ubuntu, and while they might not take a free software-only approach, they are committed to progress according to the terms and sensibilities of the community.
But the good comes with the bad and the ugly. Release quality leaves much to be desired. The X resolution bugs have to go away. It’s okay to put a lot of focus on migration-oriented features like the migration assistant and the super-easy codec/driver installers, but not if it bumps general usability features such as the GNOME Control Center from the release feature list. Adding new features in general should not supersede fixing the most visible of old bugs. Users will surely hold a distribution to the fire for having the same old annoyances release after release.
The bottom line is that expectations are rising fast. Vista may or may not be a factor. Users and businesses want Ubuntu and other Linux desktops to be ready. They want a migration path off of Windows. It’s not that Feisty is lower quality than previous Ubuntu releases. It’s not even a comparison with other current Linux desktop releases. The fact of the matter is that people expect more out of Feisty. More than previous Ubuntu releases, and somehow more than most other distributions. Through this lens, Feisty is a mild disappointment, but that doesn’t take away from what they’re doing right.
The major problem is that (and I’m pretty sure ESR has said this at some point of time in the past) most hackers aren’t interested in fixing bugs, they want to be working on new and exciting stuff. How much of this is try, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Dave
1) that darn “Brown” look is just lame. — i know you can change it but isnt it time for a change?
…Have you ever taken a swift look at Microsoft’s ‘Lunar’ theme for Windows XP that people have looked at for +5 yrs, and which is actually much much harder to change (to something else than the Windows Classic theme), than the ‘Human’ theme in Ubuntu is to replace with, say ‘Clearlooks’…
‘Lunar’ looks ridiculously childish even when compared to how human Ubuntu’s vision of what’s human is…
Edited 2007-04-30 08:06
Please…Lunar looks quite OK to my eyes. It’s no more childish than KDE or OS X’s Aqua imho.
As to changing the look of Windows XP, try this:
http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/
Please, if we’re going to distribute FUD, at least keep it accurate
Dave
Exactly where is the FUD part obvious from my post?
You know that FUD’s about fear, uncertainty and doubts?
Do I in ANY way try to make Windows users less secure about Windows? -Do I in ANY way try to make them more uncertain of their choice? -Do I in ANY way try to make them doubt their choice of platform?
To my best beliefs, the answers to these questions must be:
No, no and no…
What I’m hinting at, in case that point didn’t come out clearly enough, are the color schemes – ‘blue, red, yellow and green’ vs. ‘brown and orange-ish’ …
From Microsoft’s choice of colors it’s easy to draw a line straight to Fisher Price, that use the exact same colors. And as for Ubuntu – not all humans are brown and orange-ish, so the name of the Ubuntu theme and what it’s supposed to represent is not necessarily any better.
And by the way: isn’t it easier to pick among themes that are already installed and ready for use, or simply downloading a new theme that does not [necessarily] require extra software to be installed (as is the case with Gnome and thereby Ubuntu, than having to buy Stardock Systems’ Window Blinds and then be able to drape your Windows?
Edited 2007-05-01 09:48
The root account is enabled, you just lack the password. This really is a difference. Anyway, if you prefer to act as root you just need to type “sudo su” and there you are. I admit, it takes 3 more characters than “su -”
I’ve always used “sudo bash” – 5 characters more though!
It’s better to use “sudo -i” for that.
When you use “sudo su” you are creating a new bash job as root, launching su inside it, and then launching a new bash as root. You have three (3) processes and you only have a shell where you must launch the program you whant.
When you use “sudo -i” you are creating a new bash job as root that will act like a logging one (reading all root preferences including .bashrc, .bash_profile and so on). Only one child process and you are set to work.
Added benefit: you doesn’t need to have “su” installed, so one less program to upgrade an take care of bugs, sudo allows a finer grained permission, allowing to grant access only to some programs to user A while full access to user B and NO access to user C without telling them the root password because each one uses his/her own password while you need root’s password to use su (so you have full access to break things)
Indeed, Slackware is the most underrated Linux distribution
Eh, “sudo bash”??
“2) the installer is too simple and while thats great for newcomers its just lacking.”
Just download the alternative installation CD, and voilà: you’ll get all the same installation options that, for example, Debian offers:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.04/
Edited 2007-04-30 18:05
I was also unhappy that my wide screen monitor was not detected. There always seems to be bugs here and there that are so obvious that they always miss. This happens ever release and is getting annoying.
Yes, Ubuntu has has issues with detecting screen resolutions. Also, if you have a laptop, try plugging in an external monitor — What, I have to login and logout. And then unplug it to go mobile again! Same thing. Login and logout — or press ctrl-alt-backspace to restart X.
…
Wait a second here. Maybe that is the problem. It is Xorg (or X11) that is having the issues. It does not really have anything to do with Linux (since Xorg runs on BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, etc.)
Does it need to be fixed/improved? Yes, it most definately does. Is this Ubuntu’s fault? Not really, these problems apply to pretty much all OSes that use X, although some hack together solutions to deal with it better then others.
The real solution is to fix X though, and not just try and hack together better auto detection and xf86config build scrips/tools.
Ubuntu is helping out X.org to improve this, just as many other Linux distro’s and OSes are. When will it be fixed? Well x.org is hoping the next release, 7.3 which is due out this summer with have much improved auto-detection. Do I guarantee 7.3 will solve all of your problems and end world hunger too! No, but it should help.
So, is the correct choice for Ubuntu to hack together more auto config crap to try and make this work better for a few people now and stop the complaining, or maybe work with the X.org folks to really make things better?
“What, I have to login and logout. And then unplug it to go mobile again! Same thing. Login and logout — or press ctrl-alt-backspace to restart X. ”
Hmm, not really. You just have to know how to tell it not to display on the monitor.
For example, on ATI cards I have a wrapper for this:
http://www.fewt.com/quickswitch.shtml
There are improvements, my radeon x800 card is finally recognized properly (with a normal 1600×1200 monitor)
but that’s probably more x.org related and the wacom tablet does work except a click on the the right button gives middle button result.
for colourscheme the xubuntu blue is nicer
The reason why these bugs (wide screen, dual screen) are still there is because the devs are waiting on Xorg 7.3 to fix all of them. Canonical is a ~40-person team, they CANNOT fix issues that are inherent in the X Window manager and that are scheduled to be fixed by a new upstream version and still have time to work on other release goals, packaging, etc.
The problems with the restricted drivers are also supposed to be solved with more reverse engineering of the ATI r500 cards by r300 people, and Nouveau for all nVidia cards.
–Bonuses for Xorg 7.3/xserver 1.3–
*monitor hotplugging
*better fast user switching, less flickering
*no xorg.conf, bulletproofx (already partly in Xorg 7.2)
*easy dual monitors
Blame the fact that XFree86 was allowed to stagnate for so long before blaming other people. If by Gutsy Gibbon it all still really sucks, then maybe you can blame a bit more..
Edited 2007-04-30 03:44
I agree; although it’s worth noting that ubuntu seems to have worse monitor compatibility than a couple other distros I’ve had, so it surely can’t be all xorg’s fault.
I have a high def tv that has a pc input and can do 1024×768 in windows just fine, but is literally impossible to get higher than 800×600 in fiesty. Even after modding my xorg.conf file to add 1024×768, and removing all other resolutions, and *supposively* removing monitor detection it still will only go to 800×600, even after the million guides I’ve followed at ubuntuforums.org for ways to try and force that resolution. No solutions provided ever worked for me.
The monitor support is a serious sore spot in fiesty for me, and I will be so relieved when it’s fixed, by xorg or whoever. I hate installing it on a new computer and feel like I’m taking a gamble as to whether I have to wrestle with it to make it work with the monitor properly.
Edited 2007-04-30 04:21
Most likely changing HorizSync and VertRefresh in the Monitor section of xorg.conf to better values (taken from the screen’s manual maybe) should help. See if in /var/log/Xorg.0.log there are messages of display modes being rejected due to these frequencies being out of range.
I’ve had this problem with a few monitors where autodetection wouldn’t set the values right and resolutions would be missing or the image would be distorted.
The reason why these bugs (wide screen, dual screen) are still there is because the devs are waiting on Xorg 7.3 to fix all of them.
Considering how much negative press this is getting and how it’s got the potential to make many people curious about Linux have a screamingly bad first impression?
Finding some sort of work around that could be implimented on Ubuntu’s end should be moved higher up the priority ladder, IMHO.
Is there some way to get a bounty rolling on it? Canonical might not have the people to spare at the moment, but I’m sure there’s an unemployed IT professional and/or starving college student who’d be happy to be a couple hundred richer and could come up with something that could be patched into the current ISOs.
And you realise that the problem was solved by installing the proprietary drivers that are available via the add/remove tool. Its just a matter of downloading and installing the driver, following the instruction in the dialogue in information about the package.
For me, everything works perfectly, then again, I’m on a laptop that is 1280×800, so I guess YMMV.
Hear, hear. Just got a laptop and Ubuntu 7.04 defaulted to 1024×768 even though the screen is 1280×800 (Vista handled it fine). Also, no sound, even though the sound card (Intel HD audio) was properly detected.
Support for widescreen monitors has nothing to do with Xorg 7.3. We do it pretty well in Mandriva 2007 Spring, which uses 7.2. Version 2.0 of x11-driver-video-intel (renamed x11-driver-video-i810) does make it a bit easier to do widescreen for Intel chipsets (bypasses broken video BIOSes, making 915resolution unnecessary) but that’s really all, and it’s entirely possible to work with i810 with a bit of effort (MDV has been able to set up 915resolution automatically for several releases).
Why wait for xorg, they could have just used code from RHEL5. I installed CENTOS5 and it detected my resolution on my Samsung 225BW perfectly.
Although strangely I could find a Xorg.conf that had details as to how it was detected.
Same here, Fedora have no problems detecting the resolution of my monitor but Ubuntu does.
The bug is 7 months old:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/67369.
And I thought MS service packs were slow.
ubuntu was unable to handle nvidia graphics cards since the beginning.
Let me tell you that the following distros were able to handle nvidia cards and screens attached to it to full extent 1920×200
1. solaris 11 beta 60
2. mandriva 2007
3. Fedora 7 beta and RHEL5 and CentOS 5
4. ZetaOS
5. PC-BSD
6. opensuse and SLES
7. Sabayon
8. windows all versions
9. OSX 10.4.8 with x86 generic hack.
Nvidia is no 1 manufacturer of Graphics Cards.
Problem doesn’t stop there, but goes with ATI graphics cards; even AIW7500 card was not supported which is many many years old and by now every OS developer just supported it, except obviosly ubuntu team!!!
I’ve ran Ubuntu and Debian for years with my nvidia 6800GT and it’s been working fine every time. The secret is just to know how Debian works even a little bit.
Of course I’ve never had any of the issues that others have posted problems about ATI either. And before that I also knew how to properly install the Matrox Parhelia driver. Debian based distributions really make it easy.
@hraq “Nvidia is no 1 manufacturer of Graphics Cards. ”
Intel looks after the majority of graphics cards in machines.
December 2006
“According to Jon Peddie Research, ATI’s share of the computer-oriented graphics market dropped from 28 per cent in Q2 to 23 per cent in Q2. Market leader Intel’s share remained at 40 per cent, but Nvidia, VIA and SiS all recorded rises, reaching 22 per cent, ten per cent and five per cent, respectively. Nvidia’s market share rose two percentage points.”
It’s 2007, why don’t my forward and backward mouse buttons work on my mouse for going forward and back through web pages and etc?
It seems silly to have to install programs and reconfigure xorg.conf by hand to make this work.
Windows 2000 worked with my forward/back buttons out of the box. Maybe there’s some issue beyond my knowledge for why those buttons still can’t be made to work out of the box, but c’mon, it’s 2007.
Edited 2007-04-30 04:33
This is so simple, yet so important. A real mouse control panel should have been there ten years ago. Your type of mouse is detected and you can configure all the buttons. Then applications can react to normal click, menu, scroll wheel, forward, backward and so on instead of a specific button. And, yes, you configure it once, then applications just pick up your settings.
My ATI 9660 Pro died and I haven’t bothered to replace it just yet.
In terms of best support and functionality, is Nvidia better supported by the open source community? Or is a better fit overall?
Depends on what you want.
If you simply want good 2d and moderate 3d performance – you use your computer for mainly desktop related work with a little bit of eye candy, then the Intel based chipsets would do most people fine.
If you want grunty 3d, I would go with Nvidia, not just because of Linux support, but the fact that you get support on FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows – so you can migrate around a little without support issues.
If it was say 5 years ago, I would have suggested Matrox; I had a Matrox G550 graphics card for many years (and still working to this day running SLED) – full acceleration and opensource drivers. It would be nice if Matrox donated the chip design to the opengraphics project and simply extend the design to improve its 3d performance.
@nightly5
“My ATI 9660 Pro died and I haven’t bothered to replace it just yet.
In terms of best support and functionality, is Nvidia better supported by the open source community? Or is a better fit overall?”
I see this a lot its off-topic. The fastest card with open-source drivers is the x850, and they are not 100% but have the least problems.
According to Wiki, there are over 300 Linux distros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution
You can try every single one until your hard disk quits
Or you can just install Windows
You can try every single one until your hard disk quits
Or you can just install Windows
I am getting there.
its really difficult to have the willpower to just rid yourself of windows for many reasons.
I am a Red Hat Certified Engineer and I have servers setup at home however for my desktop OS I have yet to settle on a good distro. Perhaps I will dish out my own.
I am getting there.
its really difficult to have the willpower to just rid yourself of windows for many reasons.
I am a Red Hat Certified Engineer and I have servers setup at home however for my desktop OS I have yet to settle on a good distro. Perhaps I will dish out my own.
Well then you’re already in the right place. I’d say SUSE or RHEL/Fedora and their close derivatives are the best.
I stopped caring about the 500 flavors when I found Fedora. I realized it can do everything all 499 other flavors could, but with superior security innovations.
Windows is good as well but I’m beginning to feel more at home with Linux within a couple years than 13 years with Windows. I guess it because Linux doesn’t treat me like a clueless computer idiot if I don’t wish it to. If I want to get my hands dirty, I can dissect the OS piece by piece.
Edited 2007-04-30 07:36
Well then you’re already in the right place. I’d say SUSE or RHEL/Fedora and their close derivatives are the best.
I stopped caring about the 500 flavors when I found Fedora. I realized it can do everything all 499 other flavors could, but with superior security innovations.
Windows is good as well but I’m beginning to feel more at home with Linux within a couple years than 13 years with Windows. I guess it because Linux doesn’t treat me like a clueless computer idiot if I don’t wish it to. If I want to get my hands dirty, I can dissect the OS piece by piece.
I agree with you and considering i am a trained RHCE i know the ins and outs of RHEL/Fedora which is great cause it makes dealing with the system that much easier.
I feel the need to get to know all that is linux and while i am a rhce at the moment i am aiming to become a Suse/Novell Certified Linux Professional.
Its very interesting to see how people package their distributions. from the very basic DSL to the bloated Mandriva (yes i said bloated).
Well I tried installing Fiesty recently and everything went fine. Installed it to the internal hdd. But once I booted for the first time, it just hangs at the USB devices(sda) section of bootup. I guess my external usb hard drive and maybe usb mouse is the problem.
When I installed the last RC, it didn’t have this problem, everything went find and dandy.
Just a thought…
And that is why the Brown/Orange/Black Colourscheme is just plain awful.
Brown/Orange backgrounds with a Black typeface is very difficult for a lot of people to read. The lack of contrast is the problem.
I demoed Ubuntu and Fedora to a few people who were looking for an alternative to Windows and the problems they were having with their failing eyesite.
None of them could live with the OOTB scheme. Yes they could change it but they were interested in trialing a Live distro before installing over Windows.
They were a lot happier with Fedora. They all felt that they could use that.
I demoed Ubuntu and Fedora to a few people who were looking for an alternative to Windows and the problems they were having with their failing eyesite.
None of them could live with the OOTB scheme. Yes they could change it but they were interested in trialing a Live distro before installing over Windows.
They were a lot happier with Fedora. They all felt that they could use that.
It’s a shame you failed to help them change the theme then, considering you were the one demoing Linux for your friends. Or maybe you wanted them to choose Fedora for a lame reason?
My Friends reaction was thay wanted it to be usable OOTB. They were using the Live part of Ubuntu. Yes, I showed them how to change the scheme but they didn’t want to have to do it every time they started it up. “Pain in the Ass” were some of the words used.
I tried to explain that once they installed it they would not have to do it again but no joy.
So far three that installed Fedora. Two have installed Ubuntu. All are happy with their Linux Experience but as the title of my comment said “First Impressions Count”. For many older people or people with failing eyesite the OOTB Ubuntu default colour scheme is not acceptable. This is IMHO bad Branding on the part of Canonical.
Did they ever do any market research about the Colour Scheme?
Damn it man, changing to a widescreen resolution has to be done via the command line and text file (conf) editing. Really, I expect a more “”polished”” product that from all that hype about what’s “”supposedly”” the most user friendly distro.
Someone really needs to come up with a way of providing a high quality QC to distros before they call it “final”.
Edited 2007-04-30 05:49
I doubt it’s “just” the widescreen bit. IIRC, Ubuntu worked just fine on at least one of the three widescreen monitors I’ve owned.
The bigger problem is that PC hardware uniformly blows. Even when there are specs, nobody implements them properly. Mode-setting monitors on PCs is a bitch — in the Radeon driver it’s reportedly hundreds of KBs of code. And ACPI is just never-ending piles of shit.
I think one of the best things Canonical could do is gang up with some other desktop folks and released lists of “tested, working” hardware. Hardware on Linux will never work as well as it does on Windows, simply because hardware manufacturers won’t do the job of making sure their products work with Linux. The best thing to preserve the user experience is to basically do what Apple does and say “this hardware works; if your shitty hardware doesn’t, no soup for you!” Obviously, that wouldn’t stop people from trying to install on their existing machines, and that’s fine, it just clearly separates “we tested this and it works” configurations from “this might work, but we can’t make any promises” configurations.
Edited 2007-04-30 06:07
Every time you install a Linux distribution and find that this or that hardware isn’t detected and configured properly, send an email to the hardware manufacturer. Ask them why their hardware doesn’t work properly with distro X while their competitors’ products do. Write a blog post about their unsupported hardware and provide a link in the email. Also provide forum links that show other users having similar problems with their hardware.
Yeah, these hardware companies probably don’t support Linux, and they definitely don’t support anything other than Red Hat and Novell, but they are beholden to their customers, and they have to protect their image. The Web is a powerful tool for consumers to drag a vendor’s reputation through the mud if necessary. We should use this to our advantage. The Linux community might be small enough to ignore if we quietly accept and work around the status quo as individuals. But we can be a vocal minority with a sprawling Web presence if we band together. The hardware vendors can’t hide from that.
That’s a very good point, but that doesn’t obviate the need for Canonical to publish lists of well-tested configurations. You should at least have the option of a clean out of box experience by making sure your hardware conforms to one of the supported configurations. It would do wonders for their marketing image.
A simple test previous to the install process could warn people of not so well supported hardware.
Why does Windows seem to work OK then? If it’s that messy, your logic would apply to Windows as well. If they can get it working then so should the Linux guys (baring proprietary hidden code of course).
Dave
While I’d say feisty fawn is an impressive release, it’s not without it’s share of bugs.
For example I have two soundcards. An onboard VIA soundcard and a soundblaster live card. For as long as I can remember Ubuntu has switched back and forth between the two on reboot, which is a little annoying. I’ve never had this bug in any other distro but I reboot so little and there are so many other aspects of ubuntu I like that I’ve always let it slide, but with feisty fawn it’s only gotten worse. Now Ubuntu thinks I have 3 soundcards! For some odd reason it detects my soundblaster card twice, once correctly as a soundblaster card using alsa, then as an eMicro card using OSS. It’s ridiculous! Is it so hard to ask me which soundcard I want to use and then disable the other one? I’ve asked for help before with this problem but have never received an answer.
Also is anyone else having issues with totem continually changing it’s estimation of the total length of a media file?
Edited 2007-04-30 06:23
You could disable the VIA card through the BIOS, that did the trick for me.
At least it detected you had a monitor of some kind. I just got a blank screen once selecting install from the 7.04 alt-cd, no vga no nothing, but it was still running in the darkness
I had to restart the installation and set my vga settings manually to be able to install it.
Once installed, I had to add extra boot options to grub so I could get a boot screen every boot.
This is a current OS, made a few weeks ago, not 7 years old! Admittedly I’m running a very new gfx card(nVidia 8800GTX) but jeez, even win2k install gives me a vga screen to boot from!
You forgot to tell us on what kind of display you booted it. What you say is kind of fishy.
Because first, every card output at least some VGA resolution that every display should be able to render.
Second, you rebooted and changed your VGA settings out of a vacuum ? I could never do that without knowing what is wrong. Are you a psychic ?
Third, why do you talk about Win2000 giving you a VGA screen to boot from, when Ubuntu gave you exactly the same thing?
Basically, I’m saying your post is completely useless, except as FUD. If I had the same problem as you, I would have added the card I was using (you’ve done that), the display I had, and the solution to the problem if I found it myself. If not, then I would have given a link to where you can find the solution for this setup.
AND I would have sent Ubuntu team a bug report for these hardware, with the solution I found.
IMHO this is more useful than what you did.
I am using 2×19″ philips LCD’s that worked fine in Dapper.
It says there right at the first boot menu press F4 for vga settings. So no, not from a vacuum!
Yeah it did – until I selected the install option which made my screen go black. Sort of tells you someone screwed up huh? I mean if you get a screen and then you get nothing!
There is no point in submitting an already submitted bug.
The solution to the problem is easy to find on the Ubuntu forums, but that’s not the point is it? The point is this is a show stopper bug that’s all too common with Ubuntu!
There’s no FUD in my post, if you don’t believe me then too bad, I have nothing to gain from spreading bullshit. I use Ubuntu as my primary desktop, and these kinds of things shouldn’t be happing in the year 2007!
Edited 2007-04-30 10:03
I am using 2×19″ philips LCD’s that worked fine in Dapper
Was it installed with the 2×19″ setup ?
It says there right at the first boot menu press F4 for vga settings. So no, not from a vacuum!
Does it give you the right settings for your monitor then? Or were they taken from a vacuum?
Yeah it did – until I selected the install option which made my screen go black. Sort of tells you someone screwed up huh? I mean if you get a screen and then you get nothing!
I never denied this was a problem.
There is no point in submitting an already submitted bug
It wasn’t obvious AT ALL in your post that the bug was submitted. A link would have been better, like I said.
The solution to the problem is easy to find on the Ubuntu forums, but that’s not the point is it? The point is this is a show stopper bug that’s all too common with Ubuntu!
Alright. You know, it may be easy for you to find, but not for other people. Anyway, I now know far more than what you said earlier. I think you didn’t want to speak about it because it was a dual screen setup. Do you think we would think your complaint wasn’t valid then? It’s not because it’s not common that it’s invalid.
There’s no FUD in my post, if you don’t believe me then too bad, I have nothing to gain from spreading bullshit. I use Ubuntu as my primary desktop, and these kinds of things shouldn’t be happing in the year 2007!
I said your post was only useful as FUD, because of how little information you put in it, not that it really was FUD. And I sure enough believe you, I never thought you were lying. I just said that these kind of posts actually don’t help. I understand you’re frustrated.
You know pretty well why that happens (bad hardware, no specs, …) though.
The “funny” thing is that this probably happens because Ubuntu tries to be userfriendly, with its graphical boot instead of text boot.
I don’t count the number of monitors (mainly LCD) that don’t output correct EDID information, because they’re too cheap for that. Soon, distros will have to ask “do you have a LCD widescreen?” so that it can output a 1280×720@60 Hz resolution by default, or sth like that.
Hey I’ve already helped people through this problem on the Ubuntu forums long ago.
This is not a support forum, there’s no need IMO to go into such nitty gritty’s.
If people are looking for solutions to their problems, best they ask over there where there are more than enough people willing to help including myself! But I understand where you’re coming from
I hated 7.04
It lasted about 3 days, then I installed 6.06. Then ran update-manager -c -d to move to 6.10
I was actually running kubuntu, and although it never crashed or froze, it just seemed a bit too wobbly for my liking.
An example. I started frostwire, it was running fine, then I started firefox and thunderbird at the same time.
Their taskbar names came up, and the cursor bounced away with the firefox icon. For like 30 seconds or so !!!
Then… nothing. Neither program started. I was thinking about trying again, but instead closed frostwire. I then retried and the two programs started straight away.. Strange, but it was replicable every time.
It was also slow to start, slow to start applications and was using double the swap space.
Enough says I, and removed it.
Back happy again with kubuntu 6.10
I might re-experiment with Ubuntu or Xubuntu.
There’s a tool, in the device manager IIRC, that allows you to report which hardware doesn’t work.
I see a lot of people complaining, but why not a single one reported their non functionning hardware ?
You’re knowledgeable enough to come post here, why can’t you do that ? Do you think FOSS evolved in a vacuum ?
These font problems, screen resolution problems, HDTV related problems are only recently being taken care of, it won’t happen overnight by magic.
I’m glad we have reached a state where most problems come from outside of Linux, like most problems cited here. They all come from bad hardware or bad drivers.
FOSS has pretty well evolved, and is becoming better and better as time pass, and it’s the same for Ubuntu.
I still use my own Linux OS since 2001, and it gets better and better. I have my own Linux OS, because no distro is good enough for me yet, so I understand that people say some things need to be fixed in them. This article, I think it’s pretty good. Even if it bashes Ubuntu for Gnome, XOrg, and other Linux userspace programs problems, I think it’s good. That’s what we need, but we need even more that these people report their problems, be it at Ubuntu or upstream.
People that just say sth is wrong in Linux and go back to Windows are plain useless to FOSS. We don’t need these people, as they don’t give us anything. If only they even reported bugs before going back to Windows, it would be better.
This said, I use Ubuntu on one laptop, that I use from time to time (rarely in fact). It’s pretty good, and allows me to see where distros are lacking.
There cannot be one day without an article on Ubuntu ?
There cannot be one day without an article on Ubuntu ?
that is EXACTLY my point when i said its over hyped!!!!
Can there not be an article about Ubuntu without somebody complaining about it? The site’s name is OSAlert, and Ubuntu is an OS Distro
I agreen the site name’s is OSAlert, not UbuntuNews …
I’ve just installed Ubuntu, and seeing whether the author is correct.
Ubuntu 7.04 on this laptop dv6209tx, everything worked, checked my remote control, which didn’t work before, but realised that HP had put the battery in the wrong way as not to wear it down, sound worked, graphics card work, quickplay keys at the top of the keyboard worked, wireless worked.
So after that experience, I actually beg to question, what is going on in the case of the reviewer? considering most people don’t install their own operating system – most either get it as a restore cd from their hardware vendor or they get their ‘technically knowledgeable’ relative to set it up, the point of ‘its not ready’ is moot as each person is an individual and as such, each experience is unique.
The biggest problem (at least as far as I see it) is the fact that Ubuntu has no control over upstream bug issues.
Quibbling over details such as whether a ‘Computer’ icon should included on the Desktop by default, or what colour the uSpash should be, is all well and good, but does seem somewhat trivial when there are so many other far more serious bugs. The problem is that Canonical are in no position to do anything about these more serious issues.
Take a look at the Gutsy Gibbon Ideas Pool thread on the Ubuntu forum and you’ll see that the overwhelming majority of issues & requests being posted relate to either Gnome or the kernel.
Many users will simply not understand (or care about) the distinction between the various constituent parts of the OS, and so Ubuntu will end up taking the blame for problems which are really nothing to do with it.
Given that Canonical seem to have a bit of cash at their disposal, I don’t understand why they don’t place a series of bounties on the most annoying bugs (as this may be a way for Canonical to positively influence upstream bug fixes that will specifically benefit Ubuntu – and everyone else in the long run).
An example of one of the issues that makes Gnome completely and utterly unusable to me is the totally half-arsed single-click implementation. I hate double-clicking with a passion, and I simply refuse to use any software that forces me to indulge in this pointless activity. In Ubuntu, not only does your single-click setting get totally ignored in all GTK File Open / Save As dialogs (thereby forcing you to endlessly double-click through layer after layer of folders) but even in Nautilus itself, single-click has not been implemented properly (there is no mouse over selection).
Even small new file managers like Thunar manage to get this correct in a way that Gnome simply can’t be bothered with.
There is there already a patch for this particular issue, but the bug has been on Gnome’s bugzilla for 4 years now, and still it has not been implemented.
That;s why I just laugh when I look at Gnome’s HIG and see comments such as:
Make Your Application Consistent
Make your application consistent with itself and with other applications, in both its appearance and its behavior. This is one of the most important design principles, and probably the most famous, but it is also frequently ignored.
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/principles-consiste…
The biggest problem (at least as far as I see it) is the fact that Ubuntu has no control over upstream bug issues
No, but they can issue bug reports to upsdtream and apply their own patch as long as upstream doesn’t fix their bugs.
For example, you couldn’t use basic user management while using shadow password (with PAM at least) if distros didn’t do that. That’s how all distros deal with these issues (and how I work too).
Many users will simply not understand (or care about) the distinction between the various constituent parts of the OS, and so Ubuntu will end up taking the blame for problems which are really nothing to do with it
And rightly so. I see no problem there, they expect this.
An example of one of the issues that makes Gnome completely and utterly unusable to me is the totally half-arsed single-click implementation
You’re completely dishonest here. If that’s true, then Windows is completely unusable to you too. I know I have a vey hard time with Windows single click, and I have all kind of dangerous workaround to work with it in Windows. Actually, the single click behaviour is dangerous in Windows, and my workarounds deal with them.
In Ubuntu, not only does your single-click setting get totally ignored in all GTK File Open / Save As dialogs (thereby forcing you to endlessly double-click through layer after layer of folders) but even in Nautilus itself, single-click has not been implemented properly (there is no mouse over selection)
I think you know pretty well why this happens. You’re really dishonest now.
First, what is this stupid “endlessly double-click through layer after layer of folders” ? What is this nonsense ?
You just don’t do that on Gnome, unless you made layers and layers of folders on purpose, and didn’t make a shortcut for any location, again on purpose. You should have to do that ONCE at most. Now, there’s a reason the single-click was ignored historically. Now it’s fixed, and I think this bug will be closed in the next Gnome release. But then, you should know as well as me why there’s not the single-click behaviour in the filechooser. It would be like in Windows, where, for example, you want to save a new version of a file, so you want to click on the old name, then rename it, and then save. Unfortunately, when in single click mode in Windows, just clicking the file will just save the new version over the old one without prompt (because it’s the same file), not allowing you to rename anything. It’s the same problem when you want to do multi selection. Once you’ve been burned by this, you understand right away why Gnome does it like that, breaking the HIG instead of alienating the user. Better use double click than losing files
Well, we also both know the solution is to disable the “double click as single click” only in the filechooser when selecting a file that is not already selected. I think that’s what the patch does actually.
What amazes me, is that the single sentence above, is what makes Gnome “completely and utterly unusable” to you.
Smells like FUD more than anything else. I don’t say it isn’t annoying, but “completely and utterly unusable”?
Even small new file managers like Thunar manage to get this correct in a way that Gnome simply can’t be bothered with
You’re just plain dishonest again. That’s not that Gnome can’t be bothered with this, but they had higher priority problems on which to put resources. You know, like the fact that some releases before, GTK+ wasn’t aware of all these GConf settings in Nautilus, which is a far more generic problem, and one cause of this little problem.
There is there already a patch for this particular issue, but the bug has been on Gnome’s bugzilla for 4 years now, and still it has not been implemented
If I was nitpicking, I’d say it’s actually not 4 years old yet. But yeah, we all know bugs can stay unattended for a long time. If a big company with billions can’t do it, I think we can excuse volunteers for not doing better on everything and every bugs.
That;s why I just laugh when I look at Gnome’s HIG and see comments such as:
Make Your Application Consistent
Why does it make you laugh ? In case you don’t know, the filechooser behaviour IS consistent across ALL Gnome apps. So what makes you laugh exactly ?
You’re completely dishonest here. If that’s true, then Windows is completely unusable to you too. I know I have a vey hard time with Windows single click, and I have all kind of dangerous workaround to work with it in Windows. Actually, the single click behaviour is dangerous in Windows, and my workarounds deal with them.
I see, so because you have a hard time with single-click then that means that I must do too, and you therefore call me “completely dishonest” when you know nothing about me. I wonder how you manage to single-click web links and menu items if you have such a hard time with single-click.
When you have a full understanding of my mobility and difficulty with double-clicking, then you might be in a position to comment about what I do and don’t find difficult. Until then, please don’t tell me what my own abilities are, I know them far better than you do.
First, what is this stupid “endlessly double-click through layer after layer of folders”
Have you ever tried to change icons? /usr/share/icons/Tango/48×48/Places, nope the icon I want is not in there, let me look somewhere else, maybe it’s in the ‘Human’ folder….
Unfortunately, when in single click mode in Windows, just clicking the file will just save the new version over the old one without prompt (because it’s the same file), not allowing you to rename anything.
Where exactly do you see this behaviour?
If you want to rename the file then right-click and rename it (the same as you would do under any other circumstance). If you want to use an existing file name as a starting point for saving your new file then right clicking will put this file name into file name box where you can edit it before saving. If you only want to select a file in the File Save dialog, then you shouldn’t be clicking on it, just point to a file to select it (which doesn’t overwrite anything). Click ‘activates’, point ‘selects’. If you try to save to an existing file you get a dialog telling that the file already exists and it asks “Do you want to replace it?”
Why does it make you laugh ? In case you don’t know, the filechooser behaviour IS consistent across ALL Gnome apps.
So Nautilus is not Gnome app then?
Edited 2007-04-30 10:46
I see, so because you have a hard time with single-click then that means that I must do too, and you therefore call me “completely dishonest” when you know nothing about me. I wonder how you manage to single-click web links and menu items if you have such a hard time with single-click
That’s a misunderstanding. I don’t have any problem with single-click mode, at least in Gnome, as that’s what I use exclusively on all my Linux sessions. And I’m as annoyed as you are about the fact that it’s not effective with folders in the filechooser. Now, if you have disabilities, I agree that’s more than annoying, didn’t think of that, let me apologize for forgetting that issue. Of course, if that’s so, you should even more use shortcuts, and if you really need to navigate through directories often, keyboard navigation should be easier to you, until this is fixed.
Have you ever tried to change icons? /usr/share/icons/Tango/48×48/Places, nope the icon I want is not in there, let me look somewhere else, maybe it’s in the ‘Human’ folder….
Yes, I’ve done this exactly once. And I never needed to go to these places like you. I select an icon theme and that’s it.
You shouldn’t even do that kind of things, it makes the icon cache less efficient, or inefficient.
This is a case of you damning the GUI for it being too powerful. In another OS you know well, what you describe isn’t even possible, or at least, not as easy to do. And people were saying Gnome removed too much features… Perhaps that wasn’t enough.
If you want to rename the file then right-click and rename it (the same as you would do under any other circumstance)
Huh ? When you left or right click a file, it appears in the text box below in a save dialog. I use F2 to rename files, as the point-and-click only method was never reliable. What you talk about is exactly one of the workaround I was talking about. In double-click mode in Windows, when you click a file in the save dialog, it appears in the text box below, and then, from this template, you can change it to the name under which you really want to save your data. In single click mode, if you do that, it saves the file right away in some conditions (I cited one). The other option is to type the entire new name of the file.
If you want to use an existing file name as a starting point for saving your new file then right clicking will put this file name into file name box where you can edit it before saving
Actually, that doesn’t work… Unless you let your pointer long enough on the file. Talk about consistency…
If you only want to select a file in the File Save dialog, then you shouldn’t be clicking on it, just point to a file to select it (which doesn’t overwrite anything)
Do you realize how ridiculous what you just said sound? You shouldn’t click on the file to select it?
Apart from that, what you say is true.
Click ‘activates’, point ‘selects’. If you try to save to an existing file you get a dialog telling that the file already exists and it asks “Do you want to replace it?”
Unless this is the same file. So if you wanted to have different versions of your file, you’re screwed. As long as you didn’t get burned enough of course.
So Nautilus is not Gnome app then?
So Nautilus is a save or open dialog now?
Do you realize how ridiculous what you just said sound? You shouldn’t click on the file to select it?
It’s not “ridiculous”, that’s exactly how single-click is meant to work. I would have thought that this was obvious.
It would make no sense to have a system that opens files on single-click and then uses the exact same single-click as the method for selecting the file (because the file would keep launching whenever you tried to click on it to select it). How can it be logical to have two totally distinct mutually exclusive file actions invoked by a single method? That’s why mouse-over selection should be part of any single-click activation mechanism. To select a file you pause your mouse pointer over it, the file highlights and then after a short delay it becomes selected (but not opened). If you want to activate the file (i.e. launch/open it) only then do you click on it. This is entirely consistent with other areas of UI – e.g. if you do not want a menu to open, then you don’t click on it, if you do not want to open a web link then you do not click on it. Why should it be any different for icons? (other than the fact that people have got used to clicking on an icon and nothing happening other than it becoming selected). In single-click mode if you do not want the item to open (i.e. you only want it to become selected) then you don’t click it, you just point at it (exactly as you do with web links).
If people want to use click-to-select as part of their double-click activation setting then that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that single-click should be made to select files in the same way that double-click does. It can’t do (for obvious reasons).
Don’t take my word for it. There is a long established principle for the correct implementation of single-click activation in Windows (despite your assertion that what I am saying is ‘ridiculous’).
Quote from the Microsoft UI Design Guide:
“If the user selects single-click activation, then use hover (pointer held for time-out) for click operations, and click for double-click operations”.
Link (for the above quote):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dn…
IMHO, Gnome is one of the biggest obstacles to linux on the desktop and the source of many of ubuntus problems. As a Desktop environment, it doesn’t really have that much going for it. If KDE wasn’t such a mess, it would reign supreme, I’m looking forward to seeing what version 4 brings to the table, in the meantime, Gnome will have to suffice.
As a Desktop environment, it doesn’t really have that much going for it. If KDE wasn’t such a mess, it would reign supreme, I’m looking forward to seeing what version 4 brings to the table, in the meantime, Gnome will have to suffice.
Tried XFce? I installed XFce 4.4 on Dapper (http://tech.tolero.org/blog/en/linux/xfce-440-packages-for-ubuntu-e…) not Xubuntu. It is really good and much faster than Gnome.
Edited 2007-04-30 14:13
So okay, the screen width is a problem of X and there I shut up me mouth, it has to be fixed, and I underline IT HAS TO.
Now, the remaining problems are those told in the article?
In that case my friends, one step more and Linux will be on all desktops, because if the usual bickering about polish is about the fact that TOTEM does not tell you ” Look mate, it is illegal in your bloody country to have them, so don’t look at me” then we REALLY are there.
Next week I’m on to install the new version
I agree entirely.
The autoconfiguration in Xorg is being worked on, no worry about that.
Actually, even fonts problems are nearly nailed down. Now, Gnome has to correct some things about fonts, mostly related to giving feedback on what exactly the font size means on the screen.
The only annoying problems that stay in Linux are ubiquitous applications that aren’t compatible (MS Office, newer Flash player, seamless iPod podcasting, various codecs, …) and drivers. Which means : mostly things outside of FOSS power to get (but that they can emulate).
Ubuntu tries to add usability that was lacking (and still is sometimes in vanilla apps that I use), and that’s fine.
I’ve wrote a german blog about the new Kubuntu 7.04.
http://www.verbloggt.net/kubuntu-im-test-durchgefallen/
My conclusion: the worst ‘easy to use’ linux distribution ever.
I still haven’t seen a good release of Kubuntu yet. Every release I’ve used sucks, badly.
I am completely disatisfied with ALL linux distros I’ve tried to date except PCLinuxOS. I haven’t tried Freespire so I don’t know about it.
PCLinuxOS is the only one that makes me feel like I am using Windows. I don’t know what it is really but there is something about them that they just do it right. Software installation, control panel, good fonts. Everything is easy to find. Excellent control panel. I tried latest Kubuntu but no……I couldn’t even find a way to turn on Compiz/Beryl. Just where have they hidden the setting? With PCLinuxOS it is pretty obvious. It is where it is suppose to be — in “Hardware”.
Edited 2007-04-30 12:21
Um, if you want something that feels like Windows, why not just use XP or Vista? Something like Mac OS X would be a better goal.
I tried two machines, one worked fine, everything just worked flawlessly the desktop effects just turned on, beautiful.
The 2nd machine (AMD dual core) had a Radeon X600 in it. The installer crashed while partioning the hard drive and I had to run it manually.
The desktop effects did not work, the screen was limited to 1024×768 (looks rubbish on my LCD.)
The arrow keys did not work in vi in a terminal.
The system would not switch to a console out of X windows. I messed up the X config trying to get a working 1280×1024 mode and faced with a monitor that was out of sync in every mode and no console I just gave up in disgust.
I know it is a recoverable situation – I just can not be bothered with it.
That machine has reverted to running Windows.
Even if I needed to download the whole of .NET 2 just to install the ATI drivers – at least they worked.
I have actually taken the time to write my issues with Ubuntu out but don’t have with me right now so I’ll summarize. I am more familiar with RPM/YUM and can accomplish all I need there (albeit more slowly). I find little bugs in Ubuntu that are irritating I don’t find in Fedora. I prefer the cohesive management of software, “Extras” (soon to be just included in Fedora) rather than the debian universe where I often find outdated, ill-configured/compiled packages. I like the cutting egde update of in-version Fedora updates (like kernel updates). And even with the more cutting edge package management I find Fedora to be more stable. I like being able to just go to Livna and have relaible access to third party restricted formats.
What’s wrong with Ubuntu? Well, not much – in my opinion – and things are developing quite fine – except every six months when a new Ubuntu release is out and I want to do a distribution upgrade…
I’ve tried to upgrade Ubuntu every time there has been a new Ubuntu release. Sometimes I’ve spent many evenings reconfiguring and reinstalling stuff to get a well working system again (like the one I had before the upgrade). Often I’ve just given up and done a fresh new install. That’s what I nowadays recommend to anyone wanting to upgrade his Ubuntu to a new release: copy your configurations and important files and just do a fresh new install; it will save you from a lot of potential trouble. Too bad though, as the easy and smooth dist-upgrade process is supposed to be one of the major strengths of Debian-based systems.
After I had got used to to the mostly seamless distribution uppgrades of Debian, it was not so funny to notice that the same apt-get / aptitude dist-upgrade process in Ubuntu often won’t work as smoothly as in Debian. I’ve read that many others have had very good success using distribution upgrade in Ubuntu though – but not me. I wonder if those succesful people have mostly had just the basic default packages installed that come automatically with Ubuntu, and haven’t customized their Ubuntu desktops/instalations much? On the other hand, I have read about many, many others who have had as much much trouble if not more than I have with Ubuntu upgrades.
From the article: “many small and annoying issues — many of which appear to be a result of laziness or simply failing to test the packages bundled”
Maybe the relatively fast release schedule is just a bit too much for the Ubuntu developers – compared with Debian, and the developers just cannot get all the bugs and issues fixed well enough?
Why I choose ubuntu is that it comes on one cd,
I didn’t like the downloading of multiple ones in redhat and suse, has new packages, compared to debian stable, is relatively easy to dist upgrade online, for suse they wanted you to buy the new version or download more cd’s
Well, although Debian Testing comes in tens of CDs, that's only for those that want the whole shebang. You can download only the first CD and be done with it,so there goes your reason.
And for those that don't want GNOME for one reason or other as their default DE (like me), they can download the alternate CD with either KDE or XFCE or just download netinstall (less than 200Mb), install a bare system and build upon that which is not nearly as hard as it sounds.
I tried Ubuntu (well, Kubuntu actually) once and although I didn't have any hardware problem with it, it was close to the worst experience that I had with Linux so far due to its instability and small glitches everywhere. I think that once you get used to its quirks, Debian Testing is much better than Ubuntu overall.
… in that I missed the obvious, but I downloaded Kubu 1st time with 7.04 these days and used it as Live CD only – but: How can there be no Firefox on a 700 MB CD in the 3rd millennium?!! Are they in denial or something? Especially for a Live CD, the application used 99% of the time by the occasional user is the Browser, NOOOOT Openoffice 2.02, and most certainly not Konqueror as main-browser, for which there was space on the disc, apparently… do today’s kids even know about Konqy still
Btw, I am sure Ubuntu is great and all that, I am not religious about my distro, only lazy, but I fail tosee how this would be better, or even as pleasant on the eye as a current Suse. My point is that I don’t see why Ubuntu-users think that Ubuntu reinvented the wheel, judgeing from all the hype.
(I am giving all Live discs a boot for curiousity…)
You downloaded Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu.
KDE’s pride and joy is Konqueror, integrated almost as tightly into KDE as IE is into Windows. They’re not in denial, but add another browser to it and you’ll have people screaming “bloatware” and telling you they could have installed it with Adept if they’d wanted to go that route.
after reading these comments and similar in articles on slashdot, digg, etc I think I may be the ONLY person who did not have an issue with Ubuntu detecting my Nvidia card and the correct resolution on my widescreen LCD monitor.
however, I reverted back to Fedora as that is the only distribution I have found that does NOT loose my mouse when I switch to/from various machines on my KVM
I gave a try to Kubuntu 7.04, installed and voilà, evertyhing is working fine!
Ubuntu community is working on giving us one of the best user experiences for the UNIX world (including all the Linux distros, *BSDs and UNIX OSes [Solaris, AIX, HPUX, etc.]), and they are achieving their goals.
Why do people take this very good piece of and dare to say that it is not good enough? Everything is working, everything is working fine, the community help is amazing and IT’S FREE AND OPEN…
If you find something that it is not working as you want, fix it. If you are not a technician, report your problem; if you do not see Ubuntu on your language, help the community to translate the resources for your language… There are a lot of ways to help the community to improve the product YOU ARE USING instead of throw it dust and crap. You are not paying for getting the software, so, you can give some help back.
Considering the incredible number of people who can’t even boot the liveCD because the new kernel is completely fuxxored on certain kinds of optical drives, USB devices, and SATA/PATA HDs…
But no. Go back to schoolyard griping about the color brown, single-clicking, and mouse buttons.
This is one of the most broken liveCD releases in Ubuntu’s history, and the PCs it’s affecting are not outliers. Sadly, the older the machines are, the better chance I have of even booting Feisty’s liveCD.
Keep telling Apple they’re idiots for standardizing their hardware; the crickets will be your audience.
*cheers*
The whole ‘linux for noobs’ idea is wrong from the start…
Computers are not easy, and some people just want too much with no basic knowledge at all…
Ubuntu detected my monitor settings wrong for the last 3 releases but for some reason both sarge and etch detect everything flawlessly.
etch rocks. debian’s great for a geek desktop
It is linux and that means you still need common sence and a little computer savvyness.
While any OS is suitable for the visual impaired,windows is certainly the most suitable OS for the braindead.
but the Ubuntu (or Gnome) Screen Resolution tool thinks my monitor’s native res of 1920×1200 doesn’t exist. So I couldn’t even manually correct it myself.
So it must be a bad distro..
I think people just see some really shiny Emperor’s clothes when they look at Ubuntu, because it is doing nothing that no other distribution is doing – and a lot less besides.
It still incorrectly detects my 1440×900 resolution as 1440×1440 and i am dropped to a scary commandline which would horrify the newbies. And i’ve had this display for 3 years, so distros atleast set it as 800×600 and i can load X ok and modify the resolution. But Ubuntu since 5.10 has not worked on this.
At least on my AMD 3000XP – I’m talking 3 or 4 minutes. Older versions of Ubuntu live CDs didn’t have this issue, and neither does other Live CDs. Since I was only ‘playing’ with it, with no intentions of installing onto my PC, I didn’t investigate the problem any further. Has anyone else noticed it is much much slower to boot up and load than earlier versions?
Dave
The LiveCD is quite slow, but then after you have installed the OS onto the HDD, it’s fast. The installation was quite fast to me, so it’s OK.
I’m using Ubuntu 7.04 with pleasure. Some of the software I need work fine here – like Skype, microphone recording – it’s not so with Skype in Fedora (my workplace experience, where I have FC6 installed, F7 beta doesn’t work either with Skype). I heard from my friends that Mandriva’a version of Skype has the same problem.
Ubuntu cut the rough diamond debian which arguably is the most imminent gateway to opensource imho.