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Ten years of Ubuntu

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Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#91

Post by z0r »

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…

I have similar experiences, but on the whole still prefer Ubuntu to any other computing experience I've had before. Keyboard issues have been my most recent timesink. Setting up a udev rule for my keyboard (unicomp with trackball, needs some xinput commands run when it gets plugged in) took a long time. That is one brittle grammar with very unhelpful debugging tools. And they got rid of XKBOPTION altwin_swap_lalt_lwin a couple of years ago, patching that back in was messy and there's a good chance I'm going to forget what I need to do to fix things up next time I have to set up a new system.

Even with all the problems I perennially run into I wouldn't be able to setup my input devices and working environment _just so_ with another operating system, so I'm stuck with this junk!

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#92

Post by totalrobe »

deepakprakash wrote: post #77
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…

Yup, the free CDs is what I remember as the first thing about Ubuntu - and the fact that it worked out of the box. There is a fun story as well: We were in college (in India) at the time and my friend went ahead and ordered 100 CD's or so (they actually encouraged it at the time for distribution). The package arrived at the local Post Office after a few weeks and he was asked to go collect it, which seemed strange. A…

Nothing has changed. Indian Customs vies for most corrupt in the world. They also have crazy high duty on electronics. Many software companies in India have offices that are "bonded warehouses", meaning that the computers have not had the duty paid on them and cannot legally be removed from the premise.

Source; I work in the Global Trade Management

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#93

Post by cowardlydragon »

Ubuntu has been going backwards for at least two years.... - Unity doesn't seem to improve, and just further fractures and balkanizes the linux desketop - They dropped the installation versions where I can do software RAID setup... all my desktops are RAID0 dual HDD and SSD OS/swap/boot. - Ubuntu desktops have been getting slower as I upgrade my hardware, not faster.

OSX has maddening keyboard shortcuts, and Windows is committing suicide.

With the excess cores, GPU power, huge disk space, virtualization, and other advancements, I should be able to seamlessly run several OSs at once. There is such amazing potential out there, but it is pretty clear that Canonical is now just putting minimal resources into Ubuntu.

It still mystifies me that Google didn't make a seriously good desktop distribution on par with OSX to destroy the windows monopoly. Instead... ChromeOS?

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#94

Post by unknownBits »

I'm on arch linux with kde. I tried ubuntu several times, but I can't stick with it. The installation is a breeze, but for the rest it's not that exiting. Btw, I consider myself as a human being too!

Still, I am very happy with the existence of Ubuntu, helping millions of people moving away from Windows and OSX. This is a huge boost for the development of software for linux.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#95

Post by pessimizer »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #69
agumonkey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange. I have a hard time remembering why I liked Ubuntu right away. Maybe a blend of good enough looking, works out of the box mindset, which made a community grow rapidly and kicking a nice network effect where you would quickly find solution on their board/wikis. I was impressed later when they managed to bring new Window Management ideas without too much time or pain.

It was summed up for me at the time by the joke "Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". Their focus on getting stuff installed and working was a big deal then.

Wasn't this mostly Knoppix's accomplishment?

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#96

Post by cowardlydragon »

tribaal wrote: post #52
maouida wrote: post #25

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.

I've been upgrading my laptop through 6 releases (it's 3 years old), and never had a single failure. Do you use the provided upgrade path? It's very surprising to me to hear that - we test upgrades pretty thoroughly. Disclaimer: I work for Canonical.

I've had to rebuild with a new OS install twice. I've run Ubuntu for probably... crap, is it 10 years now?

It usually coincided with a oh-well-might-as-well-upgrade decision...

At least one was a two major version upgrade. But still.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#97

Post by Keyframe »

bubblemachine3k wrote: post #50
eloisant wrote: post #37

What I really loved in Ubuntu is that they were the first distribution that really considered itself an OS, not "a way to install Linux" and make choices about what it should include. All the other distributions started by asking whether you wanted KDE or Gnome, Abiword or OpenOffice, and ended up installing a bunch of software you may or may not want "just in case". Ubuntu made choices, if you didn't like it you cou…

Mandrake Linux would like a word with you.

or RHEL Workstation, SUSE, etc... but point kind of stands since Ubuntu was, for some reason or the other, highly visible. Maybe those free CDs had something to do with it.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#98

Post by Danieru »

totalrobe wrote: post #92
deepakprakash wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, the free CDs is what I remember as the first thing about Ubuntu - and the fact that it worked out of the box. There is a fun story as well: We were in college (in India) at the time and my friend went ahead and ordered 100 CD's or so (they actually encouraged it at the time for distribution). The package arrived at the local Post Office after a few weeks and he was asked to go collect it, which seemed strange. A…

Nothing has changed. Indian Customs vies for most corrupt in the world. They also have crazy high duty on electronics. Many software companies in India have offices that are "bonded warehouses", meaning that the computers have not had the duty paid on them and cannot legally be removed from the premise. Source; I work in the Global Trade Management

So does that tactic work because the computers are "in-transit"? What happens upon end of life? Do they need to ship the computers out of country?

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#99

Post by ihsw »

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…

One thing that's lacking is out-of-the-box audio. Granted, I do have to install Nvidia drivers to get competent video, however there are numerous guides for that, and it's not entirely necessary.

Audio, on the other hand, remains a mystery to me. It just didn't work and there was nowhere for me to turn for help.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#100

Post by _navaneethan »

If Ubuntu is not avail now, then I have to go payment course for learning Windows

Ubuntu is pure white box to learn. I am enjoying it from my college life where I just touched the computer initially, then immediately ubuntu was loaded.

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