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Ten years of Ubuntu

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Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#121

Post by Eiriksmal »

testing3212 wrote: post #110
hiou wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait. Yeah, we get it. You are really worried about yourself and your time. Yeah, we get it that you want to make a generalization that "All the other distributions" don't have 100% support. Which is obviously not true by any respect. I'm typing on one right now that both Debian and Arch work without issue. "I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long…

> It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme? Maybe with desktops, but even just last year, trying to get wi-fi setup on my beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell. Multiple programs to do the same thing, and none of them work quite the same. So running scripts from the command line with the usual commands wouldn't work, so th…

Agreed. Desktops? Great compatibility. Laptops? Not so much. This August, in 2014 for those keeping score at home, I had to create a custom LiveCD of Fedora 20 to even get the distro to boot! The vanilla FC20 LiveCD images were shipping a Linux kernel a few weeks to old to work on the new, generic, bare-bones Asus laptop.

The custom spin downloaded all the packages from the updates repository, loading an ever-so-slightly newer kernel that played nice with that Asus's particular UEFI/Intel Haswell combo.

That computer's working great after doing that, but not everyone can be expected to: A) Troubleshoot why a "should work every time" plain-jane OS image won't even boot--kernel panics in 2014? Who knew, right? B) Figure out how to create a more up-to-date version of that image

UEFI and secure boot and on and on... It's not ~2005-2011 anymore, laptops are a lot more complicated and more diverse than they used to be a very short time ago.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#122

Post by Ologn »

davidw wrote: post #21
johnchristopher wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 int…

Canonical went on a binge hiring Debian developers, which is a reason why these releases took so long.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#123

Post by hiou »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #121
testing3212 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme? Maybe with desktops, but even just last year, trying to get wi-fi setup on my beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell. Multiple programs to do the same thing, and none of them work quite the same. So running scripts from the command line with the usual commands wouldn't work, so th…

Agreed. Desktops? Great compatibility. Laptops? Not so much. This August, in 2014 for those keeping score at home, I had to create a custom LiveCD of Fedora 20 to even get the distro to boot! The vanilla FC20 LiveCD images were shipping a Linux kernel a few weeks to old to work on the new, generic, bare-bones Asus laptop. The custom spin downloaded all the packages from the updates repository, loading an ever-so-slig…

Was your Laptop certified by the manufacturer or distribution to run Linux? Does OSX work on that Laptop out of the box?

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#124

Post by cbr »

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

Normally when something is in a bonded warehouse it's a storage-only situation. Looking online I can't find anything about indian special cases where this works differently, just the ordinary "store goods here until you sell them, and pay the duty then".

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#127

Post by Eiriksmal »

hiou wrote: post #123
Eiriksmal wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Desktops? Great compatibility. Laptops? Not so much. This August, in 2014 for those keeping score at home, I had to create a custom LiveCD of Fedora 20 to even get the distro to boot! The vanilla FC20 LiveCD images were shipping a Linux kernel a few weeks to old to work on the new, generic, bare-bones Asus laptop. The custom spin downloaded all the packages from the updates repository, loading an ever-so-slig…

Was your Laptop certified by the manufacturer or distribution to run Linux? Does OSX work on that Laptop out of the box?

I have no experience running or installing OSX and am utterly unequipped to answer that question. I also have no idea what "certified by the manufacturer or distribution to run Linux" means. As I explained elsewhere, there is such a staggering amount of proprietary hardware in use in laptops, none of the Linux Laptop authorities can keep up.

I can, however, answer your unspoken question: Will Windows run on it? Well... Yeah. Windows runs on everything powered by an x86 processor. Windows 8.1 came installed on the machine.

The average computer user can't understand the concept that a certain operating system will not work on their computer. You pick a machine out from an array of nearly-identical machines, then start using Windows 8 or OSX 10.x as soon as you open up the cardboard box and plug in the computer.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#128

Post by logn »

NateDad wrote: post #83
latch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard good things about the XPS. I travel a lot though. I prefer 13" and last time I looked, I found very little that supported 16GB. Also, again, with the traveling, battery life is huge. This might also sound lame, but I also hate the badges. I saw that the XPS 15 only has the single intel badge. I'd rather have 0...it really grates me the wrong way (not just on laptops, WTF do I want "Samsung" printed in whit…

You know it's just a sticker, right? :) I always take all stickers off my laptops. But, yes, I wish the XPS 13 had a 16GB option.

They're also specially controlled stickers, some with holograms, meant to suggest that the hardware inside is legit. Kind of like new NBA hats. You can remove those too.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#129

Post by apozem »

_nedR wrote: post #109

As an Ubuntu user since 10.04, what I would really like to see is Ubuntu matching or beating Windows/OS X with regards to battery life. When I first installed 10.04, my ubuntu setup actually beat Windows Vista in battery life and stability. Then 10.10 came out with serious power regressions (related to kernel regressions, Unity, etc.) - which I still blame from killing my battery. Since then, Windows 7 and 8 have got…

Battery life is why I don't use Linux more. Even with monkeying around in the system, those Linux drivers suck up a lot of juice.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#130

Post by eslaught »

hiou wrote: post #105
pjmlp wrote: post #41

Ubuntu LTS is the only GNU/Linux distribution that keeps me on Linux on one of my laptops (an Asus netbook). All the other distributions fail short of 100% laptop support out of the box. As I am no longer on my 20's with lots of time to spare, either it works out of the box, or it doesn't. I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects just to get something working. Or just trying out dis…

Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait. Yeah, we get it. You are really worried about yourself and your time. Yeah, we get it that you want to make a generalization that "All the other distributions" don't have 100% support. Which is obviously not true by any respect. I'm typing on one right now that both Debian and Arch work without issue. "I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long…

This analogy to OS X is completely unreasonable. OS X software and hardware is co-designed to work together, by a single manufacturer/developer. In fact, you could even say that OS X is specifically designed not to work on any hardware not made by Apple. Creating a "hackintosh" desktop is seriously difficult business.

Linux and Windows are nothing like that. With both, the ecosystem of hardware is quite large, and there is an implicit expectation that any OS should work on any machine (ignoring edge cases like embedded hardware). With Windows, this assumption works well because all hardware manufacturers test their machines with Windows. This is almost never the case with Linux, where even if you are lucky to find that a manufacturer has tested with one Linux distro, they might not have tested with your preferred distro. What are you going to do if your distro "isn't certified"? Just walk away? That's not a reasonable choice for many people.

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