This is exactly the same article that has already been written by every geek who blogs and has recently tried Linux. Nothing new or interesting. Flagged.
Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
51–60 of 129 posts
Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#52I actually agree with the article (having installed Ubuntu and Windows countless times over the past few months made me appreciate how much nicer Ubuntu is), but I take issue with one point:
"Windows is expensive and bad value for money."
No, it isn't expensive. You deliberately chose the version of Windows with extra features that mean nothing to the average user. A more proper comparison would be with W7 Home Premium, which at the linked site is £100. And that's only if you're upgrading- most people just leave whatever Windows version that was preloaded on their system on there, and there's rarely any reason to actually upgrade (since W2000, anyway). It's essentially free.
Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#53Nope. Ubuntu won't be ready until upgrading Firefox (or any individual package) doesn't force insanity like opposite window controls or Unity without asking. Regular people aren't interested in seeing drastic and seemingly nonsensical changes like that for no reason, and almost certainly aren't interested in being part of some grand OS experiment. They want something that is consistent and works. While package manage…
> Having to swallow upgrades to every single package on the system just to get one package ... [means] ...instability... Just curious, have you really experienced instability by installing all updates on any mainstream distro? If so, could you share what happened? I've not had that experience but would like to know about it.
It has happened to me once in a while. In fact my full upgrade to (k)ubuntu 11.04 ended up leaving the machine in a unbootable state. Not a big deal since I had data backups. But still time consuming.
Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#54So who's going to step up and become the premier Linux hardware vendor? I was just looking at Linux laptops this morning and the problem is battery life. The System76 Lemur 13 gets... 2-3 hours of battery. That's not going to work. The ZaReason Strata Pro 13 gets... I don't know because they don't advertise it and I can't find a review that mentions it. The conventional wisdom is to get a Thinkpad, which I might have…
Dell have good support. They have some deal with canonical, so it seems most of their laptops work great. Also, ASUS ones run quite well. ASUS even ship linux on their netbooks. My girl friends netbook runs for ages on it. So much that it has never run out of battery on us. Sent from my Ubuntu Dell.
Any particular Dell models? I've heard bad things about Asus and compatibility with touch pads, etc. Not true?
(I had Thinkpads before, but am considering a change in the next month.)
Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#55Could this article be more wrong? I took the Linux challenge last month, making Ubuntu my main OS. The experience was terrible and I switched back to Windows. Linux is still almost awesome and I've retained a Linux install as a "work machine" to keep me away from my video games very nicely. But the fact that I can successfully use Linux as an "isolation chamber" betrays the fact that it's really not ready for prime t…
You pretty much just use the package manager for your distribution. The big distributions have pretty much every program you're going to need. I barely ever install something manually.
And for the things you do install manually, it's almost always one of two methods. If the software creator is kind enough to provide a package for your distribution, you download and double-click it. Otherwise, it's a .tgz file that you extract and (almost always) do:
./configure && make && make installRe: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#56I've often been told that Linux will work well on old hardware. I can confirm this is true with distros like ArchLinux but I've never had Ubuntu run well on old hardware. A year ago I got a free PC. A P2 with 128MB of RAM. Attempted to install and run Ubuntu. Incredibly slow. I also attempted a windows XP install and I was amazed to see that it ran just fine. Heck, I could even fire up VLC and watch a video. Yes, it…
>A year ago I got a free PC. A P2 with 128MB of RAM. Attempted to install and run Ubuntu. Incredibly slow. I also attempted a windows XP install //
It doesn't sound like you're comparing like with like.
XP was released in 2001. Last years Ubuntu was released last year, 2010 and was targetted mainly at hardware that isn't 10 years old. You could at least try Xubuntu or something that was made for old hardware. P2 came out in 1997 so XP working on it is not that great a surprise.
Try Win7 on that old PC and get back to us how well it runs ...?
FWIW I run Kubuntu 11.04 on an Athlon 1.1 with 768MB RAM - it's slow but works without any real issues. I've tried DSL and Puppy on a pendrive and they both pretty much blaze on this hardware.
Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. For example when Ubuntu switched to Pulseaudio, it borked my sound. Even with the release after that one (can't remember which one it was), I had to have a shortcut on my desktop for 'killall pulseaudio' because just playing music for more than 15 minutes would end up in garbled sound. Or in Karmic, when a regression in the Intel video drivers made even dragging windows stutter on my laptop with 4GB of RAM. Or w…
Ubuntu and Fedora, though the most common desktop distros, also are notoriously NOT very stable. Fedora is RedHat beta-test playground, and Ubuntu is built from a Debian-unstable snapshot. OTOH many people complains that Debian, RedHat or CentOS are too long to implement the latest features, but this is the price to pay for extreme reliability. Know your needs, choose accordingly.
I just wish there was a middle ground though where you dont have to choose between extreme reliability + years of waiting and fast turnaround + notorious instability
Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#58Nope. Ubuntu won't be ready until upgrading Firefox (or any individual package) doesn't force insanity like opposite window controls or Unity without asking. Regular people aren't interested in seeing drastic and seemingly nonsensical changes like that for no reason, and almost certainly aren't interested in being part of some grand OS experiment. They want something that is consistent and works. While package manage…
Debian Stable with Backports[1] seems a decent solution to me.
Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nope. Ubuntu won't be ready until upgrading Firefox (or any individual package) doesn't force insanity like opposite window controls or Unity without asking. Last time I checked, Ubuntu kept existing setup, desktop etc. when upgrading. Anyway your rant is nonsensical: where is my good ol' "Start" menu organisation when I upgrade to Win 7? > The only big one is Debian/Mint, but from what I hear that's still too unst…
> Last time I checked, Ubuntu kept existing setup, desktop etc. when upgrading. Have you ever dist-upgraded an Ubuntu distro? Upgrading to Lucid moved your window controls. Upgrading to Natty turned on Unity. While it's true that upgrading from, say, XP to Win7 will change your start menu, the point is that you can still upgrade your "packages" on XP, WITHOUT having to get the new Win7 start menu. > I'm speechless, o…
You're doing a dist-upgrade, which is exactly like going from XP to Win7. Stay on LTS if it bothers you that much.
Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nope. Ubuntu won't be ready until upgrading Firefox (or any individual package) doesn't force insanity like opposite window controls or Unity without asking. Last time I checked, Ubuntu kept existing setup, desktop etc. when upgrading. Anyway your rant is nonsensical: where is my good ol' "Start" menu organisation when I upgrade to Win 7? > The only big one is Debian/Mint, but from what I hear that's still too unst…
> Last time I checked, Ubuntu kept existing setup, desktop etc. when upgrading. Have you ever dist-upgraded an Ubuntu distro? Upgrading to Lucid moved your window controls. Upgrading to Natty turned on Unity. While it's true that upgrading from, say, XP to Win7 will change your start menu, the point is that you can still upgrade your "packages" on XP, WITHOUT having to get the new Win7 start menu. > I'm speechless, o…
> the point is that you can still upgrade your "packages" on XP
Like DirectX 10 or 11? The fact that you can upgrade is due to the abnormal shelf life of this particular release of windows. Try upgrading most programs on a win98SE or win2K machine.
> Obviously YOU don't know what you're talking about; Debian Mint (LMDE) is based on Debian-testing, which is supposedly HIGHLY unstable.
Mint is based upon Ubuntu, which is based upon debian-unstable (Sid). Debian testing hardly is highly unstable; most debian users run testing on their desktop systems, and keep stable to the servers.