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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

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Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#141

Post by hnriot »

prg318 wrote: post #140
hnriot wrote: post #138

nvidia and linux just don't seem to work together. I've been on 13.10 and looking forward to an upgrade in the hope that it might fix the problem where compiz freezes up the window manager for minutes on end. Linux with nvidia is about as unreliable as using windows which is very frustrating. Anyone know if 14.10 works better with nvidia cards?

NVIDIA actually does a great job with their binary blob drivers and they are much more reliable than the AMD Catalyst drivers for Linux. It sounds like your problem lies with compiz/ubuntu. Maybe try a different window manager/distro?

I beg to differ, my experience with the nvidia drivers is quite different to yours. Whenever they upgrade them its a nightmare and generally results in the driver crashing the kernel. Letting a video driver bring down the kernel is inexcusable.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#142

Post by lucb1e »

wnevets wrote: post #107
etfb wrote: post #68

Well, that was fun. The upgrade crashed halfway through. I rebooted in recovery mode, finished the upgrade using the dpkg repair option, and then restarted a few times and found that it still wasn't working. Looked like a video problem, so I checked /etc/X11 and found the xorg.conf files had been backed up and not replaced. A comment in the last one inspired me to run nvidia-xconfig and it worked fine. Pretty typical…

> still a lot less painful than upgrading Windows XP to 7. how do you figure that?

Not the OP, but I just happened to upgrade from Linux Mint 15 to 16 yesterday (which is not officially supported). Also had some trouble that I needed to solve from the command line (or a live boot), but the upgrade was done in about 50 minutes, everything included.

98% of all configuration is retained, applications do not need to be reinstalled, all your files are where they belong, and it's overall very pain-free if you are tech-savvy enough to do the command line part.

So yes, I would totally rate this as better than upgrading between Windows versions. Even compatible ones like Vista and 7 required much more configuration work afterwards and took longer. Less technical skill required though, but users could just pay someone to do it for them on Linux.

Not sure what it's like to upgrade Mac OS X, I would actually expect the ease of Windows and compatibility like Linux there. I'm kind of curious now.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#143

Post by macco »

arjunnarayan wrote: post #134
jasonkester wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes feel like I'm the only developer who doesn't want to spend all his free time fiddling around with his operating system. To me, that's not developing. It's just extra work that's completely orthagonal to building cool software.

No, there's plenty of us who feel that way: I (and most of the people I work with) just use OS X on the desktop, and Linux on servers. This way you get the perfect desktop environment that "just works". The linux boxes never have a window manager installed in the first place.

How is OS X more "just works" than a clean Ubuntu install? And both are far from perfect.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#144

Post by rsync »

samolang wrote: post #52

The first comment I saw said it was impressive. The second said I should use Gnome instead of Unity. The third said I should try something called localepurge for a leaner install. The fourth said KDE was better than Gnome and Unity. The fifth recommended Xubuntu over Gnome. This is the sort of fragmentation that makes popular adoption difficult, but is also what makes Linux awesome.

"This is the sort of fragmentation that makes popular adoption difficult, but is also what makes Linux awesome."

I agree with this in principle, but it confuses me as to why FreeBSD is not, then, much more popular...

We use FreeBSD exclusively at rsync.net, and I used FreeBSD as my personal workstation from 2000 - 2007. Perhaps all the other FreeBSD people just switched to OSX, like I did.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#145

Post by gknoy »

danford wrote: post #56
old-gregg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a data point for a bystander: I much prefer Unity over Gnome 3. Here's the quick list of things that prevent me from taking Gnome 3 seriously: Alt+Tab is completely broken: it gathers windows from all virtual desktops, ruining the very purpose of virtual desktops. There are plug-ins that help, but they keep breaking after version updates and they don't function as sleek as Unity's built-in default window switcher.…

>Alt+Tab is completely broken This is kind of an opinion. There is no rule book that says it needs to behave a certain way. I prefer this. >ruining the very purpose of virtual desktops I use virtual desktops to separate windows in overview mode so when they're presented for picking they aren't really small. And also for organization. >Gnome's "workspaces" are not as powerful as traditional virtual desktops. The bigge…

  Why would you need an empty workspace (except at the end, 
  which gnome provides)? Seems to make since to me. 
  It doesn't really "re-arrange apps" it just moves 
  the work spaces to fill in the empty gap.
To each their own, I guess, but I think it's related to how we mentally map our workspace. For example, I know that my code editor and shell are on workspace 2, and my time tracker and music player are on workspace 4, so it's two keystrokes to get between them. If workspace 3 were munched due to being empty (I normally use it for Github and code review), it would be __very__ jarring to be in the wrong workspace when I switched workspaces twice to the left from my last workspace.

In practice, that's not likely to happen to me often, since I leave all of my workspaces open and populated nearly all the time, but it's still an option that I would turn off if I could.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#146

Post by vanderZwan »

FD3SA wrote: post #129
Touche wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They went from a brownish theme that people complained about for years to now a blackish purple that is equally gaudy. I don't understand why they can't go with a color scheme that isn't so dark and depressing. Then there are the multi-colored icon boxes (why do the icons need boxes around them at all?) that all clash with each other and clash with the (ugly) purplish theme, and clashes against the gradient black top…

Not to mention the font. I manage to ignore the wonky color themes (I picture a kid with a box of crayons having designed it), but the font is something that I desperately need consistency and beauty in, as I'm constantly reading and writing. The default Ubuntu font is just not consistent and readable enough for a UI. They need to find something like Segoe UI, that gets out of the way and is easy to read. I really do…

Fonts are easy to tweak though...

I do enjoy tweaking the fonts until it pleases my eyes most. I've been using Source Code Pro as the monospace font for quite a while now. Currently trying out Alegreya Sans and its variants for the regular system font - kind of controversial among my designer friends: some of them consider it too "serify".

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#147

Post by vanderZwan »

afhdshufdufdo wrote: post #38
ing33k wrote: post #8

Just upgraded from 12.04 LTS to 14.04 . already liking the locally integrated menus.

I would recommend against this for anyone on an older computer. I had been on Lubuntu 12.04, then went through phases where I had various versions Xubuntu and Mint XCFE and ended up back at Lubuntu 12.04 because it is still the fastest drop-in recent distro.

LXLE? Disclaimer: haven't tried this one out myself, just had a look at it and think of trying to revive an old laptop of mine with it:

http://lxle.net/

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#148

Post by rufugee »

glesica wrote: post #113
rufugee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every point you make except, to my knowledge, the last, is easily fixable via the gnome tweak tool or extensions. I found the same things to be frustrating when I switched to gnome, but I've been able to tweak it to the point that I now find it to be a productive work environment. That said, I've used gnome, unity, cinammon, xfce, mate and KDE, and have found each to be good in its own way and frustrating in others.…

"...tweak tool or extensions." To me, this is the problem. I don't want to rely on extensions that will potentially break when Gnome updates or be abandoned when their developers move on to other things. I also don't want to be forced to spend hours fiddling with settings in order to get something that isn't completely broken. I just want my stuff to work. I also find the graphical nonsense in Gnome 3 and KDE 4 nause…

It took me all of 10 minutes to get it working the way I like. And the extensions are simple javascript....easy to hack if you need to. I get what you're saying, but I think you're overstating things a bit...probably because you just haven't tried it.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#149

Post by r00fus »

samolang wrote: post #52

The first comment I saw said it was impressive. The second said I should use Gnome instead of Unity. The third said I should try something called localepurge for a leaner install. The fourth said KDE was better than Gnome and Unity. The fifth recommended Xubuntu over Gnome. This is the sort of fragmentation that makes popular adoption difficult, but is also what makes Linux awesome.

I hate when people say you "should do X". It'd be a whole lot nicer if they de-compiled their opinion and stated something more like "Doing X gives you Y benefits". I ignore the "shoulds" as noise and seek the pro/con breakdown.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#150

Post by sandGorgon »

glesica wrote: post #113
rufugee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every point you make except, to my knowledge, the last, is easily fixable via the gnome tweak tool or extensions. I found the same things to be frustrating when I switched to gnome, but I've been able to tweak it to the point that I now find it to be a productive work environment. That said, I've used gnome, unity, cinammon, xfce, mate and KDE, and have found each to be good in its own way and frustrating in others.…

"...tweak tool or extensions." To me, this is the problem. I don't want to rely on extensions that will potentially break when Gnome updates or be abandoned when their developers move on to other things. I also don't want to be forced to spend hours fiddling with settings in order to get something that isn't completely broken. I just want my stuff to work. I also find the graphical nonsense in Gnome 3 and KDE 4 nause…

actually the extensions system in gnome is kind of magical. You go to extensions.gnome.org using Firefox and click a button and suddenly your alt-tab behavior has changed. It is awesome - I think the phrase "extensions" has come to connote "complications" ... but is not the case in Gnome.

I'm actually impressed at how they built a javascript API to be able to mess with core UX !

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