“Its official release is just under three months away, and Ubuntu 8.04, or Hardy Heron, promises some great improvements over the already user-friendly Ubuntu 7.10 (also known as Gusty Gibbon). This is a look at the fourth Alpha release of Hardy; including many of the applications that are now included by default and the major changes that will improve stability and usability. Among these are the addition of Firefox 3 and Remote Desktop on the applications side, and a new method for systems control known as Policy Kit, which enables the administrator to unlock certain functions for normal users.”
Ubuntu: http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
Kubuntu: http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
For those too lazy to RTA, basically the interesting stuff is a remote desktop app and VNC client on a default install, and some graphical administration utilities:
Does that mean, Ubuntu is going to compromise security and stability in order to increase “productivity”? It looks a bit like it (“where have I seen this before?”). If someone has a better translation, please let me know.
It does look good though.
A good example is changing the system’s time. While it should not be allowed by normal users on a server, on a laptop it would definitely make sense to allow normal user to change the system time at will, especially if the user travels a lot between different time zones.
In this case, the user would just have to change the timezone.
But you’re right, the easyness to change things on a system depends on where the system is installed. You mentioned a server and a laptop. The classical field of Linux’ use, the multi-user system, does not dominate today, instead, one system is usually used by one user. Most settings should be changable easily, except those ones that can – abused because of a lack of knowledge, laziness, or stupidity – enable the system to get compromized too easily.
To increase “productivity” (in fact, comfortability for the average user), security barriers are abandoned step by step. For some of them, it really does not matter. For others, they are intended to where they belong, and they have their reasons (root privileges to administer firewall and server settings).
Nope, as it says in the article, users will be able to unlock “certain functions” as well as fine tune user privalidges. There’s no mention of a change to the default security configuration.
It does, however, seem to say that Remote Desktop will be enabled by default, which strikes me as less than totally secure. Though it appears (vulnerabilities aside) that any prospective hacker will need to wait for your express permission before taking over your machine.
Your captain obvious speaking:
there is a reason, and there’s only one reason, that Ubuntu is now showing their alphas with Remote Desktop and simple user administration simplified graphically:
Business.
This is going to be an “LTS”. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, Canonical is going to have to make some money. They want support contracts with the typical MS Windows+Office workplace, as an alternative to a Vista migration (yes, I do have heard IT people talk about that in the hospital where I work).
Help desk management will ask, “we unlock people’s account and change their passwords on a daily basis easily with Active Directory, and we use DameWare [or, insert here similar program] to take over people’s desktops. You’ve got that, and it works well?”
They don’t want to hear, well that’s somewhere in our repositories. They want to hear, it’s on top of the new and stable feature list – even if that comes down to the same thing.
Canonical is going to market this. Their usual simple approach might very well work, Shuttleworth is not an amateur. It’s, in my humble opinion, not the user community lnx rulez fanboy crowd that these features are added by default for.
I actually find the switch over to GVFS the most interesting bit, in a KDE 4.0 sort of way.
Well speaking of KDE 4.0 and Ubuntu in a sort of way, I find it odd that they have no hesitation utilizing a brand-new and unproven technology in an LTS release which is supposed to represent a stable and proven platform. Seriously, it’s an alpha, I agree, but they’re warning against using it with production files right now, and it’s supposed to be LTS worthy in a couple of months?
But hey, that’s just me.
Kubuntu will not be a LTS release this time around.
Why worry about the close release dates ? The last RC for Vista was released at the end Nov/start Dec, then the final was released in January. Whats so bad about that ?
oh wait……
You’re right about the ‘gets in the way of productivity’ – I’d love to know what is more productive; having a secure system which might request the authorisation to run an application at a higher privilage level or simply just allowing an appliation to run, cause all manner of problems, hours of work down the drain – and a net loss of productivity.
Security to me reminds me of safety belts and helmets – yes they’re not 100% comfortable or enticing to wear, but when you do get into a situation where the out comes could have been worse had you not worn it, you’ll realise that it was only a marginal inconvenience when you consider the outcomes could have been alot worse.
Back on topic, for me, the issue has never been the quality of the distribution; I’ve always found the various *NIX (*BSD/OpenSolaris/Linux) distributions to be already ready for the desktop. What I do find annoying is the lack of commercial applications (running under wine would be ok, if it were a certainty that the applications would run everytime, all the time, and perfectly). As much as I love OpenOffice.org for example, it simply can’t hold a candle to the ease of use of iWorks (Pages, Keynote, Numbers). The media player, Rhythmbox I had nothing but problems on the variety of distributions I’ve tried in the past.
The foundation has been laid, the distributions are already up to the standard I think would win over the desktop – heck, Ubuntu right now is already a Windows replacement. What is needed is better applications, more of them, and third party commercial software vendors like Adobe, Intuit, and MYOB coming out and putting their 100% backing behind *NIX (which ever distribution they end up choosing).
Speaking from past experiences with PPC X/Ubuntu 6.xx systems, I can assure you that having to save work, logout/login, change a minor setting or download and install a program update, logout/login is anything but productive.
In Xubuntu 6.06 a little authentication box used to pop open (ala OS X) and ask me for my password, but I could type my systadmin password till my fingers fell off and nothing doing. (Thanks unfixed system bug!)
So, a working system that allows me to authenticate on the fly without having to do a user switch or logout/login?
That’s Productive.
It may be up and running in X/Ubuntu 7x, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to partition the one windows machine in the house and install it.
Hang on, I was going to support your case till I read this snippet. You’re basing an operating system release of today on the problems you experienced on an operating system released 2006/06/01? I don’t know about you, that is pretty pathetic justification(s).
I’m running Fedora 8 right now on this machine, and before that I ran Ubuntu 7.10; never saw a single issue like that. Everything worked wonderfully – and this is on a Dell Dimension 8400.
Sure, there are issues, but if you are going to raise issues of a product, actually USE the latest product and base it on that. Its like reviewing an Apple computer, claiming that Apples products aren’t good, then later disclosing that you’re running a PowerMac from 10 years ago!
Thing is, adobe already has support for FrameMaker on Solaris and up until version 7, AIX and the Mac. I just don’t understand why they can’t use the longstanding *nix experience they have and translate that into releasing and decently supporting more of their products on Linux and the *BSDs.
I am not going to pretend that I know Adobe’s markets better than they do, but it seems to me that, taking into consideration what I mentioned above, and the fact that Linux is slowly but surely making waves on the corporate desktop, they are missing out on being the first company to release professional image editing solutions for Linux, thereby gaining a foot hold for what could become a very lucrative market and cementing their reputation as the leading supplier of said solutions.
Just my two cents.
From my casual chatting to people of a variety of backgrounds; if Adobe provided their products on Linux (or some sort of *NIX like Solaris x86), you would find there would be a huge number of people migrating to the said platforms.
People think that end users love Windows. End users hate Windows, what they like is the fact they can run the applications they like on Windows. If those applications were on *NIX, no one would be running Windows.
Gnome has had a VNC server for ages. They’ve added encryption but I don’t see anything else new. Including a GUI VNC client is the new thing and I’m glad to see it.
It would have been more interesting if they had come up with something better than VNC because quite frankly VNC sucks the big one.
Somehow I don’t think Firefox 3 will be ready by the time 8.04 releases.
Correct me if I wrong, but I just downloaded Alpha4 and there is no such thing like Firefox3 ?
Eh? What do the alphas have to do with anything? The article is claiming that FF3 will make it in the final 8.04 release.
I have a question and I mean it, I don’t know how else to put this, I am not trying to be arrogant. Can someone please tell me what separates Ubuntu/Kubuntu from other popular desktop Linux distributions such as Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Freespire etc? I am asking because, the thril and excitement whenever someone mentions Ubuntu, is just great. For argument sake, even people that are not into Linux know about “Ubuntu”. “Yea, I once tried Ubuntu….” I have nothing against Ubuntu but I do want to know what is so great about it so, just like everyone else I can take adventage of it and increase my productivity. I am currently a Mandriva user. I am aware that Ubuntu’s company offers long-term support for its releases.
Edited 2008-02-03 00:09 UTC
This has been discussed 2184891757579210 times on every forum on the internet. http://google.com/
They’ve taken GNOME and added great improvements to it, it feels all intergrated rather than having another control panel. Their additions seem like they came straight from the GNOME team. Synaptic is fast and fits nice with GNOME as a package manager and it’s simply the best distro for GNOME bar non IMHO.
“I have a question and I mean it, I don’t know how else to put this, I am not trying to be arrogant. Can someone please tell me what separates Ubuntu/Kubuntu from other popular desktop Linux distributions such as Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Freespire etc?”
From what I have seen, there is 1 major factor at work. Ubuntu actually has a marketing campaign behind it worldwide. The other distros do to an extent, just not as much as ubuntu. It is constantly in the news, for example, with Dell selling machines with ubuntu already installed. Ubuntu is more aimed toward the normal consumer, not businesses, though it most certainly could be used in that way. Ubuntu does not have the holier than thou attitude of say Fedora, where they discourage what people really want to do with their own machine, although the codec buddy is a huge step forward.
Well, whatever they do, it’s working and it’s working well. I am impressed to how many people know about Ubuntu. So well done on the Ubuntu team. I personally, do prefer KDE but GNOME isn’t that bad either. I’ve noticed all the good programs seem to be written mostly using the GTK tool kit – GNumeric, The GIMP, Abiword, Gaim, that time machine-like data recovery program, GParted etc. I might give it another test run but I don’t know if I stay with it.
From what I understand, if you’re a KDE user you’re probably better off with one of the distros you mentioned, not Kubuntu.
But for veteran Gnome users, I’ve heard the sentiment that Ubuntu is linux that they don’t have to mess around much with, fiddle with, configure and maintain, they can just get straight to work.
For newbies to linux, ubuntu presents a highly polished and welcoming UI face, has a very friendly and helpful forum community, and will ship install CDs for free to anybody.
Absolutely nothing. Oh, you’ll hear a lot of people stirring the gears trying to explain this, using lots of impressive words such as ‘polish, ‘uncluttered’ and ‘simple’. Some will even try to tell you that you have to fiddle less with Ubuntu than with other distros (a complete lie, as any browse through the Ubuntu forums will tell you), but you will not see a single feature or application that gives Ubuntu any advantage over any other distro. Ubuntu certainly doesn’t have anything like YaST, and YaST isn’t even really great.
And you’ll also encounter a lot of “sour grapes” disparagement of it because Canonical doesn’t push KDE. Speaking generally, a casual user does have to do less fiddling with Ubuntu. The Ubuntu maintainers don’t do quite so many brain dead stupid things as some other distros. They try to think like a “regular user”. And as already mentioned by drillsgt, they don’t have the Holier Than Thou attitude which drives some distros to make certain things, of which they do not approve, more difficult for uninitiated users to accomplish.
I’m very much multi-distro, and tend to use Fedora and CentOS for my client sites because they work very well in multiuser business settings with a dedicated admin. So I’m not exactly an Ubuntu fan boy. But I do like to give credit where it is due. Ubuntu gets a lot of little things right, with respect to unsophisticated users, that other distros don’t. And the Ubuntu forums are a joy to observe. I’ve never seen forums quite so helpful and friendly as those. As a Unix admin of 20 years I find it refreshing to see a support forum free of RTFM responses.
And of course the Linux marketing that Canonical is doing is invaluable to all of us. Even to those who frequently and jealously rag on Ubuntu.
Indeed, I see the number of people who disparage it, these days, as an unambiguous sign of its success.
For my part, I use it on my laptop, because no other distro I have used on it works as well. And I have used it on my desktop machine for an extended period and been impressed. For years I strongly disliked Debian and Debian-based distros. So Ubuntu really had something to prove to me. I was biased against it from the start because of its Debian roots. But it did win me over, which I felt was quite an accomplishment.
He, he, he. I didn’t mention KDE anywhere in that post, did I? Why no, I didn’t………….
In what way? I still see people having trouble with hardware and fiddling with X configs, and having trouble with Ubuntu’s easy set up tools, in equal numbers to any other distribution such as Suse – if not worse.
In what way?
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. The mythical ‘ordinary user’ rears it’s head again, as if saying these mystical two words together is the magical answer to questions such as the one asked. I ask myself, when are people actually going to define this user?
Listen sweetheart. I’d hazard a guess that people taking the time to install Ubuntu, an entire new operating system no less, are not the kind of ‘ordinary users’ you have in mind. People who use computers quite a bit are not particularly ‘ordinary’ either. People who use computers are gamers, developers, users of office software, internet perusers etc. Ergo, there is no catch-all ‘ordinary user’ that you can claim that you’re targeting when somebody says to you “Ubuntu doesn’t do it for me.”
For those of us who’ve experienced severe problems with EVMS when we don’t even have EVMS installed, or the bold ‘no ports open by default’ proclamation that screwed up CUPS, we wouldn’t agree with you.
Asus has done more for Linux desktop usage in the last couple of months than Ubuntu has since it started.
Not really. I’m old enough to remember that we’ve had lots of popular distros over the past few years that people have hailed from the rooftops. People point out that these distros aren’t anything special, and then a few years later people silently move on to something else. We always seem to be in amongst a crowd of people who like to tell use how wonderful the emperor’s new clothes are, and a handful of people have to cover their mouths and point out that, no, he is indeed naked.
You haven’t been able to point out one single thing that Ubuntu can do any better than OpenSuse, Fedora, PCLinux or anything else you can get out there.
Yes, LUCKILY there is not that pile of poo Yast, in Ubuntu.
Some of the points that make Ubuntu a success.
LESS choice for the user out of the box.
A Live CD they can see works before they install
Add/Remove applications, (not just synaptic)
Great choice of fonts
Clear theme on Gnome
Update-manager.
Now, that last point is a very important one.
I can install an older Ubuntu, and start the update manager with a sudo update-manager -d -c
this will look for a more up to date version of Ubuntu. Yes, the whole system.
It will then download and install the new system, while the old one is still working. Then at the end, it will politely wait unti you finish, then ask for a restart to enable the newer kernel.
So, there you go, a properly working live updating system. I have not came across any other system that works like that on Linux distros.
RPM based distros like Suse, Mandrive, Fedora all expect a new install when they release a new version, I have never seen the update work correctly on any of these distros….. Now, don’t come off with “it worked for me”, if it did, great, show us. That is what Youtube is for.
Debian does this and has done this for years (apt-get dist-upgrade) since at least 2.0. Ubuntu can do this because it is built on Debian tools, specifically the god that is apt.
Edited 2008-02-04 19:04 UTC
The unfortunate thing is that Ubuntu has absolutely nothing to match YaST, and nor does any other distribution, as annoying as it can be sometimes.
You’re kidding, right?
The unified “control every setting from one control center” tool is an idea whose time has come and gone, its usefulness now fully understood: not much.
If you refer to YaST’s package installation abilities I can only express amazement at your naivete.
YaST is simply not interesting any more; its one-time innovations are now no longer unique. Since it has not received wide adoption, i.e. anywhere outside SuSE, it is doomed to eventually be out-coded and out-bugfixed into oblivion.
Nope. Ubuntu has nothing to match what you can do with YaST. Got that?
What on Earth do you think every other desktop OS has?
That sentence is just an excuse as to why Ubuntu has nothing that can match the configuration abilities of YaST. It’s incredible. You point out something that Ubuntu cannot do and someone wades in and helpfully tells us that whatever it is isn’t necessary, it’s time has ‘come and gone’ or the number one on the list – Ubuntu is focusing on the ‘ordinary’ user who doesn’t want to configure.
You do know YaST is more than just a package manager, and I’m still amused that people still like to throw around the old argument that RPM distros can’t do package management.
That’s really great, but Ubuntu still doesn’t have anything that can do a fraction of what it does.
By what, exactly, because nothing else can do what it does? The reason why it hasn’t been used more beyond Suse is because it really needs to be ported fully to a distribution, and that’s a lot of work, but it doesn’t alter the fact that Ubuntu still doesn’t have anything like it, nor the tools that Windows and OS X have.
I would be fascinated to know what you think yast has or does that is so unique.
I am not the original poster, but anyway I’d like to add my two ^Ac: yast is at least an attempt to make much of the system configurable through a relatively consistent GUI.
Ubuntu does not have anything like that. E.g the only way to configure the boot loader is through $EDITOR /boot/grub/menu.lst
The GNOME system tools (renamed from Ximian Setup tools) had originally been started to fill this gap and to provide a portable simple and HIG-compliant gui to many aspects of a *NIX system. However, they have been stagnant for a long time and a number of tools as been dropped, including the bootloader configurator known as boot-admin. boot-admin, even though well-intended, was an abomination as it with 100% reproducibility wrecked any Debian / Ubuntu grub configuration.
The Network setup utility of the g-s-t suite is also far from perfect, as it does not even understand things like WPA and has no integration with NetworkManager.
There is no firewall configuration in Ubuntu’s default install. O.K., there is firestarter as a desktop-oriented iptables frontend, but firestarter appears to be abandoned upstream and has a number of unresolved issues. (and is it not part of a default ubuntu install either)
yast does all these things will relative reliability. Even though I am not at all a fan of yast, I understand the message, i.e. Ubuntu lacks system configuration utilities.
Edited 2008-02-05 01:58 UTC
It’s nice to attempt it, but I will note two things: (1) the consistent UI is only a plus, not a necessity, when it comes to configuration (in other words, function trumps form). (2) Any unified tool is *certain* to be incomplete, because there are always more functions that could be covered which aren’t.
What happened to doing one thing and doing it well?
I was unaware of this. That is glaring and embarrassing omission for Ubuntu.
The failings of g-s-t are disappointing, but the fact is that g-s-t solves the problem the right way, even if it doesn’t have enough or correct functionality.
I’d rather have correct design and do things right than have things “happen to work” correctly now. This is one thing I *really* like about e.g. Debian, but broadly Linux as a community. If it can’t be done right people figure out how to do it right and do not just keep limping along with a half-assed solution–or at least not for very long.
I am not convinced that yast does things the right way.
The OP declared that Ubuntu had nothing like yast, as if a lack of yast were a deficiency. If the OP had said “Ubuntu lacks system configuration utilities” I would have thought nothing of it.
1. Universal hardware and system configuration, which Windows and Mac OS both have. You don’t go hunting around for half a dozen different applets. The vast majority of Linux distros still don’t have this.
If people still can’t see this, well…….. If and when KDE gets Solid up and running I hope that support for the front-end (graphical, anyway) will move to the desktop, and integration is better.
2. A half-decent package management front-end that you have in both curses and graphical form. You can actually view package categories conveniently and see what is in there when you’re not running a graphical system, rather than having to take a wild guess as to what is actually installed. This really jumps out at me when using Ubuntu, Debian and Red Hat when using a non-graphical install.
I don’t find “universal” to be valuable. All-in-one tools are not better just because they’re all-in-one; I’d argue the opposite.
I’ll agree that most distributions don’t provide a complete set of configuration tools, which is problematic.
This is just nonsense. Aptitude work quite well for this on the console, as do synaptic and others in X. I find no superiority in yast’s console package management. Unless you are using some specific definition of “conveniently.’
The goal of Ubuntu is desktop+easy.
Before Ubuntu almost all distribation were using KDE by default. I have nothing against kde (i use KDE myself and do svn up on truck every night) but it was not for everyone at the time, and even now, kde3 is much more ocmplex than gnome.
When Ubuntu came, they took gnome (ugly at the time), made it visualy OK (2004-2005 skin was not that great, but Human was nice in 2006+). After that, they made a really usable gnome distribution and in every versions they choose -carefully- things to add or not to keep the distribution as light/easy/intuitive as possible.
In 2004-2005 Ubuntu was “the international distro” that was focusing on language support, but now they are focussing on creating an alternative to windows.
8.04 will be an LTS, so no major update, but i hope to see a a well integrated timevault, the hotwire shell (fully retrocompatible with unix term) and something like http://www.iola.dk/nemo/ and other improvements like that.
The only thing i see that can be more popular that a well made easy/intuitive/complete distribution is a “facebook like” distribution, that focus on open content and integrate it everywhere.
As a (GNOME) user of both Fedora and Ubuntu, in my experience the biggest differences between them are the default themes and the locations of certain configuration files. Long-term support (LTS) is a definite difference – Fedora doesn’t offer any, whereas Ubuntu does every so often. I’m always upgrading my desktop to the latest development packages, so LTS is irrelevant in my case.
Well for me it provides a Debian base (which is my preferred packaging system currently) with a predictable and steady release schedule. It gives me a concise way of seeing what “new” features are coming out and allows me to plan.
I have tried most of the major releases over the years. Each has their strengths and weaknesses. What Ubunutu has is a low effort threshold to get a working desktop and good publicity. Publicity and momentum should not be underestimated though.
I carry over my /home and /opt directory from release to release so the impact of the update is not major. Over time I tweak my workflow around new features, then when a new release comes out repeat. Predictable and low maintenance, I am weary of playing/tweaking with Linux and just want to use it more often than not. It is nice to have a machine where you can try the new stuff (like KDE4) but my day to day work machine is not a place to experiment anymore.
OK I will tell you my personal experience why I switched to Ubuntu. In 2005 I was using Mandrake (now Mandriva) 10.1. I had been using it since 8.2, and before that I had been using RH 6 and Caldera OpenLinux 2.
I really liked Mandrake for providing a nice easy to use desktop distribution that was nicer to work in than Windows. One problem I noticed was that after a release had been in use for sometime, scripts would break and it would become difficult to repair.
Also there were filesystem problems my ext2 partition failed and couldn’t be repaired. However Mandrake was able to reformat the system as XFS on reinstallation and it worked OK after that. Later when I upgraded to a new larger hardrive, I installed Mandrake on it with XFS as the filesystem. It was fine for a while then the filesystem broke. I couldn’t repair it or reinstall the OS with any other filesystem like ext2, ext3 or ReiseFS. I thought there must be physical problems with the hard drive and that it was toast.
I just happened to have an Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 disk which I had got from Shipit to try out. It installed, using my selection of ReiserFS without a hitch. I didn’t have a physical hard drive problem, I had a Mandrake problem.
With Ubuntu everything just worked. I used Breezy for a few months before upgrading to Dapper (Long Term Support) which I used for a whole year skipping Edgy. I had no trouble with the filesystem on that hard drive.
Last summer I bought a new cheap OSless system from Canada Computers that I reckoned would be just right for installing Feisty on and would be a good platform for all the Compiz OpenGL glitz. And indeed it was it installed nicely with ext3 (after Hans’ arrest the future of ReiserFS seemed somewhat uncertain). Everything just worked. It is now upgraded to Gutsy and still working fine.
I am a total Ubuntu convert. I am sure that there are other Linux distributions that are just as good. However I am so pleased with my two years experience with Ubuntu on my desktop, it just keeps getting better, that I have become a loud Ubuntu promoter. OK I have had the odd minor problem, but they are usually easily solved by checking out Launchpad or the friendly and informative Ubuntu user forums.
It suits both the experienced Linux user that wants a reliable easy to use desktop system and the new user that’s prepared to learn new stuff when they migrate from Windows or OSX.
Edited 2008-02-03 04:35 UTC
Of course everyone has their opinion. But here is mine.
Ubuntu is Debian. The problem that Debian has, as everyone knows, is the long time between releases. This is not as big of a deal as some make it out. Just think of it this way, Debian’s releases are more like Ubuntu’s LTS releases. They come every (approx.) 2 years, are extremely stable, very secure and up to date. But toward the end of the release cylce, they start to look old. For example, Dapper’s Gnome is 2.14, Debian Etch is 2.16. The new Hardy will have Gnome 2.22. Debian Lenny, will most likely have 2.24 or maybe even 2.26.
Ubuntu though makes intermittent releases that always have the latest Gnome, though not always the latest software (since they have to constantly do a 2 month freeze before release to try to catch any show-stopping bugs). Debian is usually considered so old, because they do a freeze and are stuck there until all (or at least the majority) the release critical bugs are fixed. That’s why a Debian release has such a high quality of packaging.
Ubuntu is great because it takes the base of Debian, which has over 15,000 packages, and then smooths out the rough spots as best they can, and releases it as a single CD distribution.
I’ll put a point list.
1. Debian based. Fast, fantastic package manager, and stable set up.
2. Single CD
3. Gnome, KDE, Xfce flavored goodness.
4. Polishes Debian’s rough spots. This includes things like firmwares for wireless cards, an easy to use program to install restricted drivers (nVidia, ATI, other wireless or tv cards).
5. Free CDs.
6. Packages, packages, and packages. Compare the software list that is already in the default repositories (main, restricted, universe, multiverse) and compare them to how many OpenSuSe has, or Fedora (though now that Fedora got rid of the Fedora Core and Fedora Extras and merged them (one of the best things they ever did IMO).
7. Marketing. It’s been marketed everywhere.
8. Forums. This list obviously isn’t in order, otherwise forums would be almost at the top. Debian as it stood before, had mailing lists, and usually they weren’t overly friendly (though reading some of the flame wars of the past have been entertaining). The support forums of Ubuntu are phenomenal.
9. Synchronized with the latest Gnome. This is the one thing that Debian lacks. Which is really rather odd, because they almost always have the latest KDE packages ready for the stable releases. KDE4 is already in Unstable and has been in experimental since the betas. Gnome is usually pretty far behind. But that’s due mostly to the way the Debian Gnome team packages things and Gnome’s constant changing of what they call their libraries. For example, I’m sure the change from gnome-vfs to gvfs will create more havoc on the Debian packaging team. Well not as much as in the past, but hopefully you’ll get my point (and not to point toward Havoc, he’s helped out Gnome tremendously
.)
That’s pretty much my view of things.
In one sense, nothing. They all have effectively the same major software components available.
Ubuntu does, however, have a large repository (based on debian), it uses .deb packages and apt, apt-get and synaptic as opposed to RPM packages, it offers long-term support AND more bleeding edge versions, and it does have an apparently large following. I have found that, as far as applications, polish and “desktop experience” (however you would define that) goes, Ubuntu is similar to (certainly no better than) Mandriva & PCLinuxOS.
However, if you are looking at something obscure, that is new and not in the repositories (such as, for example, the sk1 drawing package with support for CDR files http://sk1project.org/ ) then you are most likely to find that such a project does support packages fro Ubuntu. http://sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconverto…
It may, or may not also support SuSe, Fedora, Debian less likely PCLinuxOS, but you would normally expect to see an Ubuntu package provided.
Also, Ubuntu has a large following, and if you have an issue, then you are reasonably likely to find other Ubuntu users who have had the same or similar issue, and hence more likely to find a solution for it posted online somewhere.
Just my .02c
sk1 only supports Mandriva. Your link points to their standalone UniConvertor app which has been ported to every major Linux distro as well as OS X and Windows.
For me as a system administrator
It is is easiest distro that can intall applications that you want when it comes to handling dependancies. If you cannot find the application on the “Install/Remove Applications” then you can extend the level of packages locations and if the tool didn’t find your application, still no problem you can install it via “synaptic package manager”. and if all of these didn’t still help you would definetly find the supplier of the software posting a dpkg file to allow it to be installed.
For a single user with 2-4 computers at home this sounds not important, but for 30 systems to be supported it is very important to have a distro that won’t waste your preciouse time.
Also, installing hardware proprietary software is a very very easy thing, just enable them from “Restricted Drivers Manager”.
And finally the stability of ubuntu is felt by me and many others to be alot better than mandriva, 200% better than SUSE and more than 300% better than other distros for reasons only the programmers know about.
Good thing, you still can use any distro you like without being forced to use it; so stick with the thing that you like, and if you need more search the other alternative.
Good Luck!
By you and many others? Really? And you are a system administrator? Because me and many others that administer RED HAT/SLES Oracle boxes, feel that they are rock solid!
And 300% than other distros? Oh really? So you ve used Slackware? Because I really,really can’t think of a distro more robust and solid than slack. But hey we are on OSAlert and everyone is a sysadmin with millions of years of experience and we have used ALL distros and we know first hand.
PS. BTW if you are a sysadmin you don’t care much about what distro you use, provided it has a decent package manager. Everything else is scripted. Well okay I admit that YAST(text based version) is bar none the best Admin tool for quick and dirty jobs.
I administer desktop linux boxes and not Oracle or any DB based linux servers. But for servers you are right nothing beat Redhat and Novell’s OSs. Their OSs are certified for such applications, even hardware are certified.
I am sorry for not mentioning what kind of administartion I do; but administration is so heterogenous.
Clarification is necessary because newbies or companies looking to convert might get the wrong picture. So thanks for the reply.
And yes I ve encountered many clueless persons that had an argument like “… no dude I really heard it on a forum with many knowledgeable people….”
I can only talk about Mandriva, but for me the decisive factor is that Mandriva (since its creation as Mandrake) is a rpm distro. Ubuntu is a .deb one, which is enough for me to warrant the switch.
The only relevant question is “Why Ubuntu and not Debian”.
Well, after years of Debian I tried Mandrake (or Mandriva, can’t remember)/Red Hat for a few month), and when came the time to switch back to Debian love, Ubuntu had a nicer installer (not the most important), an excellent choice of default application (no clutter of hundreds of similar programs, and no need to select programs individually for hours if you wanted to keep the menus simple) and a nice default desktop, without any tinkering (although I admit their WindowMaker desktop was really useless compared to Debian’s). So I popped up an Ubuntu cd, and stayed with it since it’s not so far apart from Debian.
Till Mandriva and others switch to .deb and a Debian base, there’s not much point asking why I prefer Ubuntu. A few years ago Mandrake and RH blew it with rpm, by providing a dog slow package manager, and either outdated or messy repos. I don’t want to see my work station borked when I install a program, and I don’t want to do it at such slow speed
. I also don’t see the need to learn another package management system when Debian’s is so good. Ok, the distros improved, and Fedora might be as good as Debian, but Debian remained the best (sane, fast and stable) for years, which you couldn’t say for other distros, so why take a another risk?
One word: integration.
All Linux fanboys, myself included, when presented with a typical Windows use case will say “Yeah, you can make Linux work like that, too.” What we mean is that the technology exists to do it, but it almost certainly requires manual setup, definitely requires editing text files and to make it work as seemlessly for the end user would require some serious utility writing.
Ubuntu is different because it does nto simple throw together the software that is out there, as most distributions are wont to do. Instead they throw together some software, look for the holes in some common end-user use cases, and then *actually write the bits that are missing*. Or, if it’s just a matter of configuring it to work by default, they do that.
Take kernel module installation. It’s not really very hard, especially in a Debian-based environment. Any Debian user can tell you how to get an nvidia kernel module: “Just add non-free to your sources.list and run m-a a-i nvidia!” – this is true and works quite well. But will an end user ever do that? Mostly they wont. But write a simple GUI tool which lists available modules, what they’re for and provides a button to click which will run the command… presto, integration.
There are countless other examples of where the Ubuntu people have taken a common complaint and actually fixed it, and usually fixed it the right way.
Ubuntu is all about the integration.
http://www.techthrob.com/tech/hardyalpha4.php
> Default Bittorent Client: Transmission
As Fedora since F7.
> Remote Desktop
It’s vino. Fedora use it at least since FC6
> Vinagre VNC Client
In F8.
> Firefox 3
Not in Fedora
But in Rawhide so it will be in F9.
> Brasero Burning Program
Since F7.
> World Clock and Weather Applet
Mainly developed in Fedora :
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureClockApplet
> Administration Changes
> Simpler Administration Access for Users
It’s PolicyKit.
In F8.
> GVFS
Developed by Red Hat/Fedora.
> Xorg 7.3
In F8.
> Prefetch Speeds Things Up
Fedora do not use it.
> Well, for one thing, Kernel-based Virtualization is now officially supported inside Ubuntu.
Fedora can use KVM since F7 (F7 boot Vista, etc).
Review of virt-manager/libvirt in F7 test 2 :
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=9066
Oh please, Fedora has a different schedule than Ubuntu, they will get newer stuff and Ubuntu is pretty much synced with GNOME not their own schedule.
It’s a matter of course some distros will get newer releases of features or miss them, should we apply your logic to Slackware?
> Ubuntu is pretty much synced with GNOME not their own schedule.
Like Fedora. Red Hat/Fedora employ a lot of Gnome developers/maintainers :
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions#head-524b64304dd4…
AFAIK Ubuntu employ only two Gnome developers.
> It’s a matter of course some distros will get newer releases of features or miss them, should we apply your logic to Slackware?
No.
what annoys me is that we can read a lot of articles with “Ubuntu improve Linux, …”.
Ubuntu does very little. Most of the job of Ubuntu is packaging the work done by the community, by Red Hat/Fedora, by Novell, etc.
Edit : And Debin. Don’t forget Ubuntu is a “fork” of Debian.
Edited 2008-02-03 03:13 UTC
But that’s exactly how it is supposed to work ! The job of a distribution IS packing and making everything work together. And most of the softwares included by RH or Novel are not theirs either, so this remark does not make much sense anyway.
Many people try linux for the first time with Ubuntu, which is a good thing overall for the linux environment. They succeeded in providing a debian based distribution that many people want to use, where everybody failed before. Is marketing one of the reason ? Of course, but that’s certainly not the only one. Making the distribution a one CD thing, the super easy installation from the live CD are things which may seem small for the geek-inclined guy, but as far as I know, they were the first ones to make it available.
IOW, they managed to make the entry bar extremely low, like nobody else before.
Edited 2008-02-03 05:18 UTC
Fedora like Ubuntu have their own way, the features you say for Fedora may not be used yet on Ubuntu for their own reasons, Pulse Audio has problems in Fedora 8 which I seen first hand.
Ubuntu has it’s own tools, Restricted Drivers Manager, Add/Remove manager, Update manager that has worked well from the beginning (unlike some I could mention), A boot process and splash that works well(unlike Fedora’s which doesn’t cover the verbose half way). Fedora and others still have broken icons all over the place, they are still stuck with their age old Blue Curve icons in the menus which looks horrid.
As for YaST, it’s a memory hog and slow just to get to a control panel.
Edited 2008-02-03 15:07 UTC
I doubt Fedora has “broken icons all over the place” as you claim since the guidelines and package review methodologically enforce this. If anyone has missed anything, pointer to bug reports or filing them would be useful compared to a run by comment on a forum.
Fedora is way ahead in terms of actual upstream contributions and adoption of new features. While distributions are primarily packagers for third party software, merely being that doesn’t allow much room for innovation.
“Restricted driver manager” are the kind of features Fedora specifically does not want to support ever considering the goals of leading Free and open source software and not a place for proprietary software components especially not proprietary kernel drivers which are considered a violation of GPL license by many kernel developers.
Edited 2008-02-03 15:46 UTC
They mix old blue curve and gnome icons I call that broken and that makes it even worse since some are even like that in gtk/GNOME sets.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours/Fedora8?action=AttachFile&do=ge…
Thats just on the panel, never mind the menus and the update icon is different as well. BTW I work on the GNOME art team and have been trying to get these things fixed on the GNOME side, thankfully the gtk icons are much better now.
The mixed icons are primarily because the GNOME icon theme is incomplete and Fedora uses a fall back alternative. If you are filling those up upstream, Fedora will automatically inherit them. The usual definition of “broken” is missing icons. Good to know your definition is different.
Yes, I had this conversation, they would rather icons stick out like a sour thumb and use crappy fallback icons then use the current better ones. It maybe a “ugly hack” but symlinking better icons you already have rather than them crappy fallback ones.
Mine you KDE4 does the same, Fallback to Crystal if no Oxygen icons are there, I just prefer a finished icon set release then a unfinshed one put in as a temp.
Most of the work is done by the Debian community. Just about everything that is labelled “community maintained” by Ubuntu is in fact Debian maintained.
I used to maintain some smaller Debian packages until a year ago. Much to my surprise, at some point I started receiving notifications from Ubuntu’s bug tracking system as well as inquiries by third parties regarding packages in Ubuntu. I looked those packages up in Ubuntu and found that I with my full e-mail was listed as Ubuntu maintainer of those packages.
Well, I’m fine with that, although, well, they could have told me. But they should really take care to give credit when it is due! The least they could do is to replace “community maintained” by something like “Debian / community maintained”
So you’re not impressed. Okay. Are there any software choices that would impress you?
A summary from the article:
Hardy installs by default with a Remote Desktop utility, allowing users to connect to your X session either locally or over the web.
VNC for remote desktop? Over the web? Ughhhhhh. If you want to really impress me, use something that does remote desktop so well you can’t even tell the difference between local and remote, even over restricted bandwidth. Start using NX for remote desktop management and terminal services. It even uses SSH transparently, and you can pipe individual applications to boot.
This is a great addition, as it will make remote technical support far easier for both parties. Like sshd, I expect that it will quickly become a necessary accessory to all Linux distributions.
Over the web, on most peoples’ broadband? I highly doubt it. VNC is a long way from even the performance of RDP, and it might be a start if you actually started using SSH for security.
Brasero is the new default burning program for Ubuntu. Its interface is sleek and easy to use, and certainly gives k3b a run for its money.
Alternatively, you could just use the best application, which is K3B.
New in Ubuntu 8.04 is the Policy Kit, which allows the user to set certain functions as “unlocked,” allowing the use of selected administrative tools as a normal user.
I seem to remember OS X being able to do this. What would impress me is being able to have a universal set of options that can be set centrally.
Another administration improvement is the Run-As dialog which prompts the user for credentials when asking to run a program as another user
Which has been in KDE and Windows forever, and which Gnome still refuses to include itself.
But most impressive is the Authorizations panel, which allows complete control over what system functions each user is able to have.
Good, but this needs to be set centrally over a network for it to be of any use.
I had the same thought. But I think they need to do some extra fiddling with the implementation to make it not fsck up with the compiz/aiglx thing. I’m not sure, but I just imagine that VLC is a lot easier to implement.
Besides, you can’t have NX on a running session. That means you can’t just share your current desktop like the example tells.. so there’s no remore support and such with NX.
And just for the record… VLC runs pretty fine over broadband. But how it handles a running compiz-session… I don’t know.
> Besides, you can’t have NX on a running session. That means you
> can’t just share your current desktop like the example tells..
> so there’s no remore support and such with NX.
Please, check your facts. NX does that also.
> And just for the record… VLC runs pretty fine over broadband.
Just for the record, VNC is slow also on a LAN.
No it doesn’t. NX only reconnects to sessions that it
has initiated by itself. You can’t login via GDM, leave home and connect to the same session at work.
You can do that with VNC for instance by using this method:
http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/
You can certainly do desktop sharing and console access with NX. It has appeared in version 3 of the protocol. What’s more, you can forward sessions to multiple machines.
Really though, you want an awful lot more than that from your chosen terminal services protocol, especially when you’re competing with RDP.
Yes you can, but why you’d want to reconnect to the same session when you can log out securely and connect, I have no idea. It’s rather like trying to turn a multi-user system like Linux into Windows 95.
> No it doesn’t. NX only reconnects to sessions that it has initiated
> by itself. You can’t login via GDM, leave home and connect
> to the same session at work.
No, it does. You can connect to any X session, even initiated by GDM.
Again, stop talking about things you don’t know and check the facts.
The reason Fedora has all of that usually first, is because of the fact that is fully intended as a bleeding-edge distribution. So all of Fedora’s improvements to Gnome get included within it first.
Vino as I recall has been within Ubuntu for the last few releases, it just hasn’t been enabled by default.
I would be more impressed with Fedora, if they could finally get RPMs to work as fast as DEBs do. That alone is my biggest complaint right now with Fedora.
My other biggest complaint is that you have to install third party repositories (which we of course are always told not to trust) for simple things like nvidia drivers.
Granted I understand fully the why of such a thing, but even Debian who are stick to their policies do deeply that Firefox had to be renamed to Iceweasel due to the trademarks, have nvidia drivers within their non-free and contrib repositories. I’m still not sure why Fedora doesn’t have something similar in place.
At least since Fedora 7 they finally got Yum to run at an acceptable speed. It was SO slow on 6 and before.
Fedora is (in my opinion) the best RPM based distribution out there though. OpenSuse would be next on my list, except that you have to hunt down a lot of third party repositories for most of the software. Which makes Mandriva the 2nd.
For what it’s worth, I run Debian Sid on both my Desktop and my Laptop and sadly, I’ve been happy with it. I say sadly, because I like to mess around with things, and when everything works the way it should, I have nothing to mess with! I’ll probably try Hardy Heron pretty soon, but then I haven’t been wanting to change my current set up too much.
Not the case with openSUSE 10.3: all you need to do is head over to:
http://opensuse-community.org/Multimedia
The 1-click-install there will install all the multimedia codecs for you and it will add the popular 3rd-party repositories for you that you would need.
Wow… cool. I must say, though, it’s about time. Ubuntu’s been doing this sort of thing with extreme ease for at least two versions now, thanks to Automatix…. Whereas Suse have historically never been very codec-friendly. Back in the day (9.3-10.1 or so I think) they had a codecs package that intentionally left out MP3 and some other formats because of *possible* patent concerns for users who *might* be US-based. And they didn’t mention this anywhere; they kept on claiming to support the stuff while actually leaving it out. It’s nice to see the mentality seems to have changed.
Well, that’s kind of what I was referring to. I had to look around for a few minutes to find that site. It needed to be a bit more in your face.
I was quite impressed by how polished OpenSuSE 10.3 was, though I still prefer the standard Gnome way of having a top and bottom panel (which I did configure myself in OpenSuSE anyhow.)
Why should anyone care that Fedora got it first? I’m an Ubuntu user and I like getting a taste of what I’ll be getting next release. As an ex-Fedora user, I’m definitely not switching back no matter how many times people yell “but Fedora got it first!”
Kind of reminds me of Opera users complaining to Firefox users about features.
I’m not switching back to Fedora either.
Do i have to say apt,synaptic?
Excellent summary, and I have had to create VM’s in RHEL5.1 Advanced Platform 64 bit at work and I have to say it works good.
I created 3 VM’s in Fedora 7 (CentOS), Para because my laptop does not support full virtualization.
I have Fedora7, RHEL5.1 Server and Fedora8 running at home and I think I will wait until Fedora9 to upgrade the F7 machines.
I tried Fedora recently for the first time since it was founded, and was surprised at the speed of Yum (heard it was a lot worse than aptitude). But it doesn’t remove unused packages when you remove a package you don’t want or no longer need, and the repository is WAAAAY smaller than Ubuntu’s, it lacked so many things I am used to, and I even added Livna. So, bye bye Fedora, thank you for pioneering and paving the way.
apt doesn’t remove leaf libraries by default either.
Refer the following for a more detailed answer
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AskFedora/2007-08-27
Also Fedora official repository alone has nearly 10000 packages. So not that small really.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/PackageStatus
If you combine it with other non-free package repositories, we are looking at about 15K packages.
Thanks for those links Rahul, good explanation.
It seems like every distro with apt I’ve ever used does remove auxiliary packages that are ‘unused’ when you remove the package that brought them in, while yum didn’t.
I tried installing NE, Kate and Klipper on Fedora, and it said it didn’t have them. I couldn’t believe it and googled a bit more, but there we are.
All the packages you mentioned are in the repository. They merely are part of other packages like kdebase or something like that instead of a separate package. You probably should look closer.
OK, thanks clarifying that. I couldn’t believe those would not be available. It would have been handy if a ‘yum search’ would have pointed that out though…
You forgot to add that it uses dpkg, which is still not there in Fedora.
apt-rpm and synaptic which uses apt-rpm has been available in Fedora for a very long time. People frequently confuse between these
.rpm format ~=.deb format
rpm utility ~= dpkg utility
apt-get ~= apt-rpm, yum etc
Once you get the basics, comparisons look far more saner.
That’s cool that they were there first, somebody has to beta test this stuff.
Do you even consider the fact that they could be not be ready for the mainstream use back then? For example, Brasero had many nasty bugs before 0.7 release (in my experience).
Also,
“This work will be based on earlier work done by Novell (intlclock). intlclock was shipped with SLES10, Service Pack 2, and it is planned to merge it with the upstream panel clock in Gnome 2.22”
Focus on smoothing the user experience.
Some Gnome things…
1. Dragging icons on the task bar is till much easier in Windows and the Mac, than in Gnome. Making one unlock on the task bar, releasing all the icons, letting you drag them without selecting “move” on each one would let the user set up their desktop faster.
2. Menu editing should be handled by Gnome itself, without requiring a helper application to work the menus. Example: Ubuntu repos don’t know much about Science applications, and many end in “other” or “education.”
3. Are the Nautilus scrips still not being installed on default? Scripts such as move file up, move file home, add real-world power to Nautilus, and it would be swell if it were made available to the user.
4. Is it possible to make Evolution stranglehold Gnome any more than it already has?! Removing it now just about breaks Gnome. Who would have wanted that? Evolution may be good, but I prefer Thunderbird and Sunbird. There’s nothing wrong with powerful Gnome applications, but Gnome’s parts should all be modular and atomic, with the ability to be separate or work together. Evolution should not be a depend on any Gnome application, well, except for Novell’s connectors.
4a. Evolution is Gnome’s premodonna, Nautilus should be Gnome’s premodonna. Could we have some bugfixes for nautilus, please, a little bugfix there, a little drag-and-drop there, just enough to make it look good?
5. The little icon emblems are nice, and useful. It would be nice if there were more. I’d even make some, but if there isn’t they would be included, what’s the point. Aren’t there a lot of badges on GnomeArt just waiting to be adopted? including more universal badges would help people recognize them. Not just once for programmers, but you know, for the office, too?
6. We can finally see our custom places/shortcuts on the places menu, but we can only add a few before the menu becomes folded. Wait! I still have y-screen left, why aren’t you using it.
7. In Ubuntu, media folders are broken down between Pictures, Music, etc. I still like to add Media folder because much of the media I have is multimedia, that’s why they call it multimedia, but thank you for leaving the word “My” from the entries, because as we know, that’s just plain foolishness.
8. Adopt a standard widget interface, as now we have 3 different onces, none seem as smooth or rich as Yahoo Widgets/Konfabulator.
9. I like Gparted, so I install it. I find its replacement a dubious choice.
10. Why, oh please someone tell me, why must I hand-edit my SMB settings, today.
12. Do we still have to install compiz-settings-manager to see the pornography known as Compiz fusion. I am not saying to build it into Gnome, but if people see the effects settings on appearance, they are going to want to see the spinny-desktop-cube, and to do they they need the compiz-settings-manager.
13. Risking life and flame, I’ll ask this: could someone please make an exact copy of Gedit that runs non-graphically, and call it Edit, or TEdit, or something, and dump it in the /bin folder?
13b. I know that you all lost your virginity with Emacs and Vi/Vim, but that doesn’t mean that the next generation should have to. Emacs and VI are powerful programs with very antiquated interfaces. The X-Terminal keyboards for these programs are buried in a landfill. All the keyboards that remain only come with Home, Pgup, Pgdn, Home, Insert, Delete, and backspace. Since the 1980’s these crazy kids are all copying, cutting and pasting with the same keys, which make VI and Emacs, the odd programs out. Please rework these powerful useful programs to bring them up to date with modern keyboards.
15. Bulletproof-X is not yet. Searching for “Ubuntu T61P.” You will learn what happens to those who dare buy new hardware. There is also an issue X11 and Wine not offering a convincing 32-bit screen emulation. It’s getting better, but were still editing the configs. Why is my monitor running at 50HZ, or is it?
16. Why, oh why, wasn’t JACK audio installed, (but deactivated by default?) It is Gnome’s best chance for well supported low-latency audio. For novelty Gnome chose another, I can’t remember it’s name because it isn’t supported as much as Jack.
16b. Alsa, Wifi, how you vex us.
17. Was there a point to making Gstreamer? Can Totem do things that Mplayer can’t do without the complicated underpinnings? Unless the point is to make DRM for Gnome.
18. Stardate 2008.2.2, Scotty tells me that he still cannot disengage the mouse acceleration and still have enough mouse speed to activate the main viewing screen. At outpost 211, the Commodore stated “Everyone likes non-linear mouse acceleration.” I informed him, “Not all gamers and graphic artists.”
18b. Startdate 2008.2.2 the graphics crew is reporting that color profiles should have been handled by Gnome instead of Gimp, so they would be systemwide. Scotty has informed me that he might be able to get more ICC power from the X11 computer, but he is going to need more time to config it.
18b. Can we, nudge, wink, surf forward and backward by pressing our extra mouse buttons, know-what-I mean?
Lastly, thank you again for working on Gnome and Ubuntu. I appreciate all the effort that’s gone into it. I admire it’s clean lines, its basic no nonsense look. Let’s face it Clearlooks–even human colored Clearlooks is probably the cleanest looking interface gracing a computer. Linux is reliable. If their are problems they can be fixed. Your Linux box probably isn’t infected with anything. Mine hasn’t crashed. With just a little more focus on the user experience, and it will be all the sweeter.
Just to take issue with your VIM comment:
1) You can use home/insert/etc with Vim when insert mode, in which case it works pretty much like a normal gui editor.
2) I happen to find Vim’s keybindings much more efficient than the ones for your typical GUI editor. The split between command mode and insert mode, while slightly unintuitive at first, allows me to work much faster with Vim than a GUI editor. I’d rather they not change to something stupid with CTRL+ALT+foo and stuff like that just so some n00bs can handle it (PS: you don’t have to use Vi, so please don’t ruin it for the rest of us!)
The reflex argument that just because someone doesn’t like Vi, they must be new–is threadbare.
When you typing your response to mine, you were probably not using a standard X Windows keyboard, on a terminal. It’s time for some text editors that work with our modern keyboards, and our modern work habits. The editors can be just as powerful as they are, doing every single thing they do now, but they can work like other modern programs.
Would the addition of an additional text editor somehow threaten Vi/Vim/Emacs? Are they in face so great that they could never be modified or replaced? In the 1960s had we perfected efficiency, and human-computer interaction? Is Vi the only face of Unix?
In the 1970s-1990s application interfaces were so different that one person only could learn one application or two. With standardization of not only GUIs, but also keyboard interfaces, people learned run many programs. That standardization was progress, and Vi stands in the way of that progress.
For the record, I don’t use vi. I have in the past used emacs, and mostly now I just use nano, if I need a quick text edit.
Gedit, I use more as a text viewer than anything else. I also tend to use it to edit html when I’m feeling so inclined to do so.
But I will say that there are seriously hundreds of text editors for *nix. Why would anyone WANT vi to change? Or emacs, or nano, or sex, or aee, or aoeui, or bbe, e3, or ed, or ee…..
I think you get the point. There are more text editors out there for Unix operating systems than probably any other type of program on the planet. So if vi’s way of doing things irritate you, move on, find something else.
Choice is king in the Editor field.
1. Ever tried clicking with your middle mouse button on an applet? If it’s locked, it won’t move, obviously. But if you just middle click and drag, it moves easier than anything else I’ve seen. Dragging icons within the quicklaunch bar on the Windows Task bar is atrocious, unless you’ve already expanded it past the >>
2. I don’t have much of a problem with the current editing of the menus. The problem of certain programs not appearing in the correct menus is with the package maintainer. They don’t have proper .desktop (which by the way is the standard way to do menus now within Gnome and KDE, not Ubuntu / Debian specific)
3. I agree with this, though I also think that the Nautilus-open-terminal should be installed by default, even though I know not every uses the terminal as much as I do. No it’s not because I can’t do the same thing through GUI, it’s just that most of the time it’s faster to do it through CLI.
4. I’m not sure about Ubuntu (I use Debian Sid at the moment) but when I try to remove just the Evolution package itself, it only removes evolution-exchange, evolution-plugins, gnome-desktop-environment and mail-notification-evolution. Hardly anything that is from Gnome itself. Now I bet if I were to remove some of the underlying libraries, that’d be a different story. But then if that extra icon on your menu entry is bothering you that much, you can just remove it with the menu editor. I personally love Evolution for it’s integration with the Gnome calendar. If they could get Sunbird to integrate with it as well, that would be nice.
4a. From what I recall, the Nautilus maintainer has been busy with other things. A big part of the way Nautilus has been working is due in part to gnome-vfs. But now that it’s being dumped and rewritten as GVFS, then Nautilus should be improving by leaps and bounds. Hopefully we’ll be seeing loads of improvements in 2.24.
5. Icon emblems are one of those things I’ve only ever showed people to say “neat” but have never really used them myself. Though I tend to have just a ton of files that I ‘attempt’ to organize, but don’t really succeed most of the time
6. I love the bookmark system, though it does look like the Gnome menu itself has a certain limit on length. My Places menu (oh crap, I made that mistake, only due to grammar, stating that in the current configuration I have set up on my particular computer!) is the same length as the Applications menu. Not sure if this is hard coded (probably) or simply a configuration in gconf. I couldn’t find it there though.
7. You can add whatever to those you want. It’s the bookmark function under Nautilus. Just open the folder, and use Control+D or click Bookmarks and Add Bookmark. Then it’ll be under your places menu.
8. I’ve never had widgets on my screen for more than a few minutes to say “cool” then turned them off. that’s what I use applets for
I thought that it was rather sad that one of the great selling points of Vista was the sidebar, which was the very first thing I turned off when I was using it for a rather short time.
9. Why replace gparted? It works great, and does the job that it should!
10. I haven’t had to in quite some time. Then again, I usually only use samba to copy things from my Linux computer to another windows computer, and not the other way around. For Linux to Linux I just use Nautilus.
11. Apparently you skipped 11
12. That’s a bloody good point. It’s not like it’s all that big of a program. Well I guess it’s 4mb. My question is, why not also include Fusion-Icon? It’s 213kb and is not even in the repositories in Gutsy or Debian standard.
13 and 13b. I’m not even remotely going to attempt to get into this one. I use nano myself, initially used Emacs. Asking someone to change vi or emacs would be like trying to convert a ***into the Nazi regime. It’s simply never going to happen. (I apologize to anyone that I offend with that, but seriously, I have seen very religious fervor in the fight between emacs and vi.)
14. Again, you skipped 14….
15. Give it some time. The “Bulletproof-X” is brand spanking new. Honestly, you can’t completely fault Ubuntu for not working on some models of Thinkpads. They would need to improve the nv driver (nVidia themselves work on that code, release it to X.org and then also release their own closed source driver that has 3D acceleration). The 50Hz issue is due to the closed source nVidia driver. I have the same issue on my 6800GT and 21″ CRT Monitor. I did at one point find the option for the nvidia driver to fix that. http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=96182 there is a thread discussing it. Google, as always, is your friend.
16. Jack isn’t fully supported by everything yet. Even Pulse isn’t 100% there yet. That’s why by default it’s still good ol’ ESD which has been around for a long time now. I would use Pulse, but the flash compatibility plugin is quite buggy. Half the time it wouldn’t have any sound (last time I tried it out, anyhow. It’s been a while).
16b. As far as Alsa goes, I haven’t had a problem with it, and quite frankly was rather elated when they dropped OSS out of the Linux kernel. It had always caused me problems due to only supporting a subset of the commercial version of drivers. So I had always needed to install alsa. It’s only improved more and more in recent years (mainly by changing different switches to be human readable.) Wifi is another area I haven’t had problems with, but everyone else seems to. Guess that’s what I get for researching first, then buying
Intel is the way to go for Wifi. Never had a problem.
17. Gstreamer is a backend. Mplayer is not. Enough said. Everything can use gstreamer as it’s backend, including Totem, Rhythmbox, Serpentine, Brasero, etc. Until mplayer decides to do something like xine and release a libxine that other programs can use, then it’ll just be a stand alone player. Though I do think that Ubuntu should fix their totem situation. Debian did it right, and made totem-xine and totem-gstreamer NOT conflict. I have both installed. I simply changed the Removable Drives and Media in the Gnome preferences to load up ‘totem-xine %m’ instead of just totem and DVDs play fine with menu navigation, etc. Gstreamer still doesn’t support proper DVD navigation.
18. I haven’t had much problems with mouse acceleration, etc. But that may be due simply to the way I use my computer, as far as other things go, I do think that the ICC stuff should be built into X (which I think it is, actually, but Gimp lets you use custom ones, as do other graphics packages.) I do agree with needing to have at least a nice GUI for customizing your mouse buttons. The problem being of course that it’d be a royal pain in the arse to do such a thing, since there are so many different models of mice, and not all of them act the same way. I have a Logitech MX1000 and really gave up on trying to get my mouse buttons to work in everything. I just use the mouse gestures for Firefox, and I’m happy.
Whew, that was a typing spree
Hope I answered your questions. I do like Ubuntu, but I’m more excited by seeing new software coming in all the time, so I use Debian Sid. If I use a stable release of Ubuntu for more than a month, I get antsy for new software! But I do test it out and suggest it to friends who are tired of Windows being a pile of viral crap. I would thank all the Linux / GPL / Open Source developers out there who make such a difference in the computing world, and actually bring the fun back into being a computer hobbyist.
Edit: Forgot point 16b about Alsa and Wifi.
Edited 2008-02-03 05:15 UTC
“17. … Can Totem do things that Mplayer can’t do”
Sync the sound in a flash video.
I can’t remember, but one of the totem back ends worked correctly in that regard (I think totem-xine was the one with the problem, and gstreamer did it perfectly. One of the reasons I still use the gstreamer back end.)
AFAICT this has been fixed in mplayer’s development branch for a long time. The problem here is really mplayer’s casual attitude about releases.
Edited 2008-02-04 18:57 UTC
This made me try it on my F8 Gnome install, and I could just drag icons around the taskbars (when they’re not locked)! Works on Ubuntu 7.10 as well.
Middle click and drag.
The install a command line system option in the alt cd install. Their regular install has become too bloated with unfinished wizards that make life a pain in the butt. Bullet Proof X and Restricted drivers manager just for starters.
Anyway, why are Ubuntu and Gnome so afraid of giving users the choice of what programs to install during installation?
A typical Ubuntu install these days reminds me of a typical XP install, if you don’t Like IE/Evolution, well tough, just remove the icon. It’s not bloody well good enough! Even KDE learned that Konqueror is not for everyone and separated it. Why can’t Gnome do the same for Evolution and Ubuntu do the same for that bloated piece of poo Mono!
Rant over – flame away
What are you all talking about? You can easily remove Evolution just like every other app. The only app that depends on Evolution (data server) in default install is Ekiga (does anybody actually use it?).
No you can’t. Libraries are still left behind that are too deeply integrated into gnome. Libraries I never use but cause me to waist bandwidth on crap I’ll never need!
Same goes for Mono and libbeagle0. I don’t need them poisoning my system, I should have the option of completely –purging them from my system without having to jump triple flaming hoops!
But like I said, “Install to CLI system from alt cd saves me the pain of having to remove them”
I pity mere mortals that don’t want them 
What are those libraries? Nautilus and Yelp depend on libbeagle in Ubuntu but I’ve just checked that removing every package with name containing Mono or Evolution doesn’t make me uninstall more stuff (except mentioned earlier Ekiga and obviously Mono-dependant but not very tightly integrated and crappy anyway Tomboy and F-Spot) so I’m curious because libbeagle doesn’t seem to be tied to Mono that much.
Edited 2008-02-04 10:32 UTC
Uhm, I don’t think you can remove Konqueror from KDE anymore than you can remove IE from Windows. They are in essence the same thing. Konqueror not only browses the internet, but it’s the file manager as well. Explorer / IE is the same as well.
Evolution can be removed, as can any other program in Gnome. Gnome doesn’t have any choice in what Ubuntu wants to install. If Gnome were to be affiliated with ANY distribution, it’d probably be Red Hat. They are the ones who provide most of the programmers for Gnome.
Of course Ubuntu just has a subset of programs to install. That’s what makes it great. It has a standard, easy to install setup. That’s part of what makes it so popular. They took out what a lot of distributions did, by simply having the ‘best of breed’ philosophy. Generally they try to stick to Gnome’s defaults, but when there is an obviously superior product, they put that in instead (some may argue endlessly about Rhythmbox vs Whatever mp3 player of the month is). They can’t really afford a package selection on a single CD distribution now could they? Unless you want to do it the Debian netinstall way and just install everything through apt (which is the way I do it by the way. Go custom install!)
This is also why they provide the alternative install.
Don’t be such a troll next time.
Besides how can an Ubuntu install remind you of an XP install. If you’ve ever done a straight XP install (not any OEM restore CD with all that extra crap that 99% of the users end up wanting to remove anyhow), then you’ll know that they are basically useless out of the box. Unless of course you can do all your things in Notepad, Wordpad, MS Paint and IE. XP is really not all that useful out of the box. An Ubuntu install can be used pretty much right away for all your typical needs (writing a paper, browsing the net, email, instant messaging that doesn’t completely suck (Yuck at MSN Messenger) etc.
You can remove Konqueror, what makes you think you can not? Just as an experiment I removed it from one of my boxes. Other than removing the kubuntu-desktop meta package all it did was remove konq and the plugins associated with it. Dolphin worked just fine as a File manager and Firefox amazingly enough worked as a browser.
The release of Ubuntu 8.04 will be the first time that people get to test how a dist-upgrade from one LTS release (6.06) to the next one (8.04) goes. Has anyone tried this LTS dist-upgrade yet?
Ubuntu has had some troubles with dist-upgrades in the past but upgrading a LTS release will be the real challenge because companies (that are likely to prefer a LTS release) will be hugely disappointed if the dist-upgrade doesn’t go smoothly. Also a derivative distro of Ubuntu, gNewSense that Richard Stallman uses and personally recommends, is based on the Ubuntu LTS release.
Apparently Canonical takes this challenge seriously because they’ve hired Debian’s release manager Steve Langasek to organize the Ubuntu LTS upgrade path. I’m rather curious to see how it turns out.
You also have to remember that the update-manager has seen significant updates since 6.06. Back when dapper was released the best way to do a full system upgrade was to use aptitude, change the repos, and do a dist-upgrade. It didn’t work all the time and had many issues with packages not working or things getting broken. Since Feisty upgrading has been a dream and is extremely easy to do using the the update-manager. I just upgraded my machine to the alpha version of Hardy and all I had to do was an update-manager -d command and everything was taken care of from there. Amazing if you ask me and works without issues.
Those of us that use Ubuntu and are happy with it don’t feel the need to try to hijack threads related to other distros to try to belittle them and make our distro of choice look better. That’s why you’ll find a different culture in the Ubuntu forums (very friendly people) vs other distro forums (that tell you to google your answer, or do a search, and are very unhelpful).