Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ten years of Ubuntu

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 174 posts

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#21

Post by davidw »

johnchristopher wrote: post #9
davidw wrote: post #5

I was a Debian developer for a while, but gradually ran out of time for it, and eventually went with Ubuntu as my desktop and server OS. By and large, I'm very happy with it, although I wish they'd sink a bit more time into avoiding regressions than trying to create new things. I like the predictable release schedule, and the fact that it's a bit more focused than Debian. Yet, underneath it's still all (almost at lea…

May I ask what you are missing from Debian as a desktop ? I went from Ubuntu minimal to Debian (stable, nonetheless),tiling wm for me, gnome for friends and guests, and found Debian easier to maintain (for me and my friends whose computers I manage). I must say I feel Debian's desktop experience is really top notch and crosses all the check marks of what a desktop is supposed to do (for me at least) and so I don't re…

> May I ask what you are missing from Debian as a desktop ?

When I switched, Debian was in the process of taking 3 years to go from woody to sarge. After that it would be another 5 before etch.

I'm sure Debian makes a fine desktop these days. I could definitely see switching back at some point.

I do like that there is someone who takes decisions Ubuntu; I think that streamlines things in some ways. Debian can get into pretty long and involved flames/discussions about things. Sometimes good comes of it, sometimes it just distracts people from putting out a good OS.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#24

Post by Dewie »

adamors wrote: post #15

"Linux for human beings" sounds like an oxymoron to me, after 5+ years of tinkering with Linux on the desktop. After years of Ubuntu (and Arch, Debian, Mint etc.) I'm not ashamed to say I'm really happy on OS X. Less customisation and more time to focus on actual work/leisure.

Ubuntu is really user-friendly... until you are having any kind of non-trivial problem, which can happen to anyone if they are unlucky with their drivers, the sound doesn't work, etc.. Then you are relegated to copying command line gobbledygook from askubuntu into the terminal, being able to understand nothing about what it does. At least with those tedious "click on X, then on Y when that pops up"... you're able to understand the gist of what you're doing.

I'm a programmer so I've become somewhat accustomed to working with the command line. But it's hardly a nice user interface for most people.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#25

Post by maouida »

I tried to switch from Windows to Ubuntu multiple times but I go back to Windows each time.

I have mainly 2 issues:

- Upgrade to newer version always fails. I'm left with a broken OS at the end.

- Although the UI has improved a lot since the early days of Ubuntu, I still don't like it. I know I can customize it but it always causes issues on some apps.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#26

Post by Argorak »

Dewie wrote: post #24
adamors wrote: post #15

"Linux for human beings" sounds like an oxymoron to me, after 5+ years of tinkering with Linux on the desktop. After years of Ubuntu (and Arch, Debian, Mint etc.) I'm not ashamed to say I'm really happy on OS X. Less customisation and more time to focus on actual work/leisure.

Ubuntu is really user-friendly... until you are having any kind of non-trivial problem, which can happen to anyone if they are unlucky with their drivers, the sound doesn't work, etc.. Then you are relegated to copying command line gobbledygook from askubuntu into the terminal, being able to understand nothing about what it does. At least with those tedious "click on X, then on Y when that pops up"... you're able to…

That doesn't really sound like "enough".

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#27

Post by lmedinas »

I like Ubuntu, we use (LTS releases) at work and it's been very stable and easy to maintain. It's also by far the most popular Linux distro for a lot's of reasons. Although i rarely use it at home (switched to OSX) I still keep myself updated and try every release. Imho i feel they should get more in the "latest technologies" bandwagon like they did a few years before Unity (for those who remember Ubuntu pushed always the latest GNOME releases with the latest technologies developed by RedHat and get it right even before Fedora) and upstart in order to not cause more fragmentation on the Linux desktop. Let's take Unity example: First was desktop on top of GTK2 which looked and worked better than gnome-shell. Then the transition of GNOME3 started and now GNOME was able to get a ecosystem of applications that fit's on GNOME not Unity, so currently GNOME apps don't fit on Unity desktop and even gnome-shell perhaps it's more useful than Unity. Same for upstart: It started as an new modern init system but then systemd came out and become the standard in Linux (or at least it's trying to). Now Ubuntu is migrating to systemd because their init system never gained traction. Not to mention the manpower they invested and now they don't get any result out of it. I fear the same will happen with MIR since it will NOT become the standard on Linux like Wayland.

For the future I hope Canonical don't pull the plug on Desktop and Server (which is also very popular) and give it's users the choice of using Wayland, GNOME, X11, systemd, XFCE, LXDE or other technologies instead of the "home made" technologies. Also let's hope for more bright 10 years ahead trying to get Linux Desktop in the right direction giving people a choice between Operating Systems.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#28

Post by cyorir »

cyphax wrote: post #3

I was an Ubuntu user for a few years. I remember when they'd ship the CD's out for free. One of those things that made Ubuntu great. It was also really good at presenting a very usable Gnome 2.x desktop that was ready to use from the first boot, and I was a very happy user for a while, until they started shipping software a little bit too soon (PulseAudio for example; suddenly Ubuntu didn't have sound out-of-the-box…

I started using Ubuntu from 8.04 when Windows crashed on my first personal laptop. When I saw 11.10 Netbook Edition with Unity I viewed it as something which would be geared towards touchscreens with limited advantages otherwise. So after briefly trying desktop unity in 12.04 I switched my development machine to Fedora with Xfce and XMonad. Now I only use Ubuntu on the occasional virtual machine for testing, but I may try running it on my touch ultrabook some day.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#30

Post by brusch64 »

cyphax wrote: post #3

I was an Ubuntu user for a few years. I remember when they'd ship the CD's out for free. One of those things that made Ubuntu great. It was also really good at presenting a very usable Gnome 2.x desktop that was ready to use from the first boot, and I was a very happy user for a while, until they started shipping software a little bit too soon (PulseAudio for example; suddenly Ubuntu didn't have sound out-of-the-box…

Every update was a lesson in frustration. So I thought either I'm stying on LTS or I use another distribution.

Right now I am using Debian stable for my "it has to run" systems (the ones my gf is using too) and tried Arch on the other systems.

So far I am pretty much sold on Arch linux (my Linux knowledge got better too) - but I still don't know if I'm just using Debian stable for things like my HTPC.

Post reply on HN