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Ten years of Ubuntu

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Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#161

Post by shadowfox »

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…

> Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait.

And then you took the bait!

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#162

Post by whydo »

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…

Tried a bunch of Linux distributions: Caldera, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian, ....

Then came Corel and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Clean, smooth, effortless install; everything working right out of the box; all the necessary applications; professional look and feel.

Microsoft must have had its eyes on the situation as they immediately bought into Corel. The next thing you knew, Corel was history.

Ubuntu is not nearly as pleasant an experience as Corel was back then, but it just does a lot of the basic stuff right, even though it does leave a lot to be desired in terms of polish, privacy concerns, look-and-feel, usability, openness, etc.

Hopefully, Canonical attends to these issues or someone else takes the helm in improving things.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#163

Post by tormeh »

rakoo wrote: post #137
tormeh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is for Canonical to release their own laptops where they support the entire hardware+software combo. Canonical Nexus, please? Any other company with their own Linux distro and hardware would also work, I guess. I really like Unity, though.

System76 [0] has launched its business in this area: taking a hardware, tuning Ubuntu to work out of the box on it, and supporting it. You get the assurance that your system will just work. I haven't tried them but I hope they have good business doing what seems to be the real solution here. [0] https://system76.com

Yeah, but they don't ship with international keyboards and Canonical don't test on System76 hardware in any special way, so it can break on any upgrade.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#164

Post by anonbanker »

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…

typing this on an HP Pavilion 15 Laptop. Installed Arch Linux, and Catalyst Drivers. works without flaw. Much better than the Windows 8 that was on the machine.

of course, I avoided Unity and went with KDE 4, because I'm not a massochist. Blue Ribbon, otherwise.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#165

Post by _nedR »

mattfrommars wrote: post #112
_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…

Have you tried TLP out?

No. I would like to, when I get the time (Also powertop -http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_14... )

But thats the point. Lot of us depend on our computer for work and don't have the time to fiddle with lot of error-prone settings.

This is why Linux users have been migrating to OS X for years. Deep down, we are all idealistic hackers who would love for FOSS, and open-source to win, and give the finger to big brother, but we also need to put food on our tables.

Canonical lately has been chasing unicorns and leprechauns to find the Next Big Thing (never mind that they are late to mobile, tablet, and even unified interfaces). Canonical is right that mobile is the future. Mobile first of all includes laptops, tablets , phone. And the basic requirement for a successful mobile platform is battery life.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#166

Post by Argorak »

slgeorge wrote: post #150
wtbob wrote: post #47

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. 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…

Hey, this was a worthwhile read. Thanks!

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#167

Post by simonh »

tormeh wrote: post #64
simonh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Please subtract one decade. I shall leave my error in place as a pennance.

Actually did the math on the trends here, and naively extrapolating it seems that the year of Linux on the desktop is around 2050. In the meantime we have Steam, AAA games and 1.16% market share now, according to Steam Hardware Survey. That's a third of what OSX does!

Actually that's fairly impressive and a great sign, but I suspect most Mac users get their games from the Mac App store while Linux gamers are more likely to know steam even exists. So I doubt it tells us very much about the actual number of games and gamers on Mac Vs Linux.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#168

Post by wlesieutre »

forca wrote: post #142
vivab0rg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use Midori on Linux and IE on Windows because of the scrolling.

IIRC Firefox is doing decently with scrolling on OS X with Apple's trackpads, but it doesn't work as well with the same trackpad in elementaryOS (or with the touchscreen in Windows). Midori works perfectly.

From my experience, scrolling well is a bigger deal than how many threads it has for whether or not I like using a browser. I know there are stability advantages to the process separation, but I haven't had any trouble.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#169

Post by tmp26 »

hiou wrote: post #156
tmp26 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...

The Dell one is nice. Are you sure the X1 comes with linux though? It looks like the only choices are W7 & W8

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#170

Post by bigbugbag »

thearn4 wrote: post #117
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…

Yeah, I have to agree with this. I used GNU/Linux on my laptop exclusively when I was in grad school, and every "sudo apt-get update && upgrade" felt like taking a turn in Russian roulette. The generic device drivers were almost always a nightmare. Power management was abysmal. And this was on a Lenovo machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly. While I never did have a problem that wasn't event…

« And this was on a Lenovo machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly.»

I don't know where you got that info, lenovo laptops have actually been getting away from being linux friendly, at least in my own experience over 5 generations of thinkpads.

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