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Ten years of Ubuntu

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Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#141

Post by Aloha »

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

It's not just indian customs - a friend of mine has had similar stories with Canadian Customs and free software. Customs exists to get money out of its citizens, I've had trouble with American Customs too.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#142

Post by forca »

vivab0rg wrote: post #58
dhimes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Asus netbook + Ubuntu I've found unity is a bit heavy for my poor little netbook, and have found xfce a bit better for performance. I use Linux mint (which is based on Ubuntu) for my main dev machine. The only limitation I've had with it is video- it can't handle the goPro stuff very well.

Also ASUS netbook + Ubuntu LTS, flawless for years, to this day. Now it's mostly elementaryOS (also based off Ubuntu LTS) on every desktop/notebook, works just as well and it feels even lighter. I've been using every LTS release since the first ever, and I can't praise it enough. Keep up the good work!

What do you think of Midori as a daily browser (assuming you didn't apt-get something else)?

I think it's a decent browser, it's only drawback is it's single-threaded.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#143

Post by forca »

xtracto wrote: post #88
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…

You may be forgetting the past of Linux distros. While Ubuntu's first version was 4.10, Distributions like Linux-Mandrake (released in July 1998) had a similar goal. They made their choices clear on what software to install and even added their own configuration applications.

Mandrake made Linux exciting immediately w/o having to do Slackware-like config file nightmares.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#144

Post by tatterdemalion »

> Like it or not, Ubuntu or whatever your OS of choice is does have root access to your machine. Not literally of course, but it's effective access given that their code is running with root privileges on your machine and chances are you haven't reviewed it lately. You trust your distro to make sure that code is secure, stable, and acting in your best interests.

Actually, I trust that of the millions of Ubuntu users, there is at least one person who would sound the alarm if Canonical had slipped spyware into their distribution (as, of course, people did about the absurd Amazon lens). Free software means trusting the public at large to audit the software rather than trusting the software's producer.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#145

Post by Kenji »

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.

That's weird. Nobody I know has ever made a successful Ubuntu version upgrade. There was literally no case where nothing broke. I resigned; I will make a clean new install if I want a new version.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#146

Post by peatmoss »

slgeorge wrote: post #107
peatmoss wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how ubiquitous Apple laptop hardware is, and how few models there are, I've never quite understood why Canonical hasn't invested more into a goal of ensuring perfect operation on Apple hardware. Maybe they have, and there are simply limits to what they can achieve. I sure do wish there were a not-obviously-inferior alternative to the OSX/Apple stack that ran Linux.

We don't have any Apple hardware on our Certification list: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/ In fact, no Linux distribution has ever had Apple hardware certified. If it's not certified it means that the vendor is not working with the Linux distribution. At that point it's a case where the distribution's developers and Open Source developers spend their time having to run after the hardware with bad information an…

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I can understand the difficulties in trying to support a hardware platform that doesn't want to play, especially when firmware updates could make it a moving target.

I went through the Ubuntu Certification list when I purchased my current laptop about a year ago. At that time (and now), there simply aren't any options that appear to be in the same category as an MBA 11". I would like to somehow signal the market that supporting Ubuntu is important, but the hardware manufacturers need to make hardware I want. You guys make software I want--it's a hardware problem now.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#147

Post by ForHackernews »

latch wrote: post #11

There's gotta be a lot of OSX users like me who'd switch in a heartbeat given better laptop options. I know they're getting better, but it still isn't that close.

I just run Ubuntu on a retina macbook. It's pretty easy to set up, if you use http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ as a boot manager (the Linux kernel has built-in EFI support these days), and the hardware support has been quite good in my experience.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#149

Post by tmp26 »

hiou wrote: post #134
Eiriksmal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

My question is that I don't understand why someone buys a Windows laptop expects Linux to run on it perfectly. It's the same to me as expecting OSX to run on a Windows Laptop or to install Windows on a Macbook Air. Why wouldn't you just buy a Laptop with Linux pre-installed or at least a Laptop that is certified to be 100% compatible? And if you now try to say that there aren't as many options, take a look at how man…

The problem is not "few options", the problem is "few GOOD options".

With Apple laptops, there is limited choice sure, but the choices are all pretty darn good. With Linux preinstalled laptops, they are entirely uninspiring computers.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#150

Post by slgeorge »

wtbob wrote: post #47
Argorak wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Upgrade to newer version always fails. I'm left with a broken OS at the end. I'm pretty sure that this is an issue of having a more sophisticated package management. OS X and Windows are basically huge software bundles that are dropped on a drive. They rarely change their internal structure gradually (Windows takes an odd middleground of basically keeping all patches around). It's a well understood process and ea…

> > Upgrade to newer version always fails. I'm left with a broken OS at the end. > I'm pretty sure that this is an issue of having a more sophisticated package management. I'm pretty sure that it's Ubuntu. My understanding is that Debian—from which Ubuntu is derived and which is also apt-based—is known for reliable upgrades. It's part of why I've standardised on Debian.

Actually - it's the relative user-bases and the complexity of the user-cases.

An APT based system is capable of a system upgrade - but you have to help the system. The previous commenter is completely right that one of the underlying assumptions is that the package database is clean.

This applies to both Ubuntu and Debian.

The main challenges for Ubuntu is that there is a lot of ISV software out there which can break as it's not part of the distribution [0], end-users tend to run a variety of PPA's [1] and in general they don't realise the importance of the package database[2] and the classes of hardware that Ubuntu is used on means that driver upgrades can be complex. Actually, if you use Ubuntu's documented upgrade process it runs a variety of checks which standard apt doesn't.

I suppose that with fast Net connections and cheap disks upgrades aren't as needed as they used to be - but they're still one of the best bits of 'magic' I enjoy from the Ubuntu/Debian world.

[0] The counter-point being that end-users want that software e.g. Skype [1] PPA's are great for end-users as they get to mix stable system software with the latest 'apps' but they cause problems for upgrades because you can't possibly test the variety of upgrade paths [1] You can argue that they shouldn't have to - but that's a different matter.

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