Live data from Hacker News

Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

redferret.net

11–20 of 129 posts

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#11
post #2

Which is a pity when you think about how crappy and unfinished the unity UI in ubuntu 11.04 is. In years this is the first time I've stopped using a standard ubuntu (now I'm using Gnome 3, which is almost as bad).

Unity is the incarnation of everything I hated (and worked hard to disable) in Windows 7. I rebooted and selected Ubuntu Classic as the default, and haven't looked back.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#12

What an awful article. Nothing here was 'new' but rather the same things that have been said in near every other 'Year of desktop Linux!' articles. Replace the post date with any year going back to ~ 2006 and it wouldn't be out of place at all. Also, any writer that is suggesting primetime usage of a Linux distribution and then suggests to use WINE or a VM solution is out of his mind. It's amusing how the writer refe…

Hey, the mouse "just works!". Out of the box! Linux is ready. It's always disappointing in articles like these not to see 200 corporate workers trying Libre Office (which would be fine for many many people).

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#13
post #8

The point about it running well on old hardware is well taken. Installing a new OS onto an old box very often results in an apparent speed-up. I was amazed at how fast my old pc was when I upgraded to a new pc, and re-installed XP from scratch on the old one. It was amazing. Unfortunately we then started loading software on it, doing all the normal day-to-day stuff on it, and it's since slowed down again. Unfortunatl…

> Unfortunatly installing Ubuntu on _new_ hardware is a different thing altogether.

This. I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to install Ubuntu on one of the new Toshiba Porteges. I was not expecting such terrible device support (built-in Intel graphics would freeze or kernel panic in full-screen; insert/remove to the HDMI port would cause X to run up to 100% of CPU and be unresponsive to input; screen dimmer would seemingly randomly dim and light while I was working; etc.).

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#14

So who's going to step up and become the premier Linux hardware vendor? I was just looking at Linux laptops this morning and the problem is battery life. The System76 Lemur 13 gets... 2-3 hours of battery. That's not going to work. The ZaReason Strata Pro 13 gets... I don't know because they don't advertise it and I can't find a review that mentions it. The conventional wisdom is to get a Thinkpad, which I might have…

Asus tried Linux on the EEE PC. They unfortunately tried an odd version called Xandros, with some modifications and a cut down IceWM theme. I'm not sure they enjoyed supporting it. This article says they've stopped pre-loading Linux: http://www.pcworld.com/article/196987/has_asus_abandoned_net...

and this article says they're going to start pre-loading Ubuntu: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2075819/asus-preloa...

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#15

So who's going to step up and become the premier Linux hardware vendor? I was just looking at Linux laptops this morning and the problem is battery life. The System76 Lemur 13 gets... 2-3 hours of battery. That's not going to work. The ZaReason Strata Pro 13 gets... I don't know because they don't advertise it and I can't find a review that mentions it. The conventional wisdom is to get a Thinkpad, which I might have…

Dell have good support. They have some deal with canonical, so it seems most of their laptops work great.

Also, ASUS ones run quite well. ASUS even ship linux on their netbooks. My girl friends netbook runs for ages on it. So much that it has never run out of battery on us.

Sent from my Ubuntu Dell.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dito moved away from ubuntu and found crunchbang linux, because of unity

Crunchbang isn't great. It breaks regularly; it's pretty big; and there are weird dependency problems. Compare it to distributions like Slitaz or Tiny Core, both of which really are small.

What I've done is to install Debian (you can choose testing or stable) base system. And Fluxbox / Openbox on the top of it will all the applications you need. I'm happy with that.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#17
post #2

Which is a pity when you think about how crappy and unfinished the unity UI in ubuntu 11.04 is. In years this is the first time I've stopped using a standard ubuntu (now I'm using Gnome 3, which is almost as bad).

You should try out Mint Linux. It's basically a fork of Ubuntu with a much better UI (in my opinion).

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#18

So who's going to step up and become the premier Linux hardware vendor? I was just looking at Linux laptops this morning and the problem is battery life. The System76 Lemur 13 gets... 2-3 hours of battery. That's not going to work. The ZaReason Strata Pro 13 gets... I don't know because they don't advertise it and I can't find a review that mentions it. The conventional wisdom is to get a Thinkpad, which I might have…

My Thinkpad T400s runs at 8W/h when tuned with powertop2 (3g disabled, wlan disabled). But as the battery only has a capacity of 43Wh it only comes up to a bit more then 5 hours.

I could however replace the disk drive for another battery and have about 9 hours of run time with it.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#19
I was introduced to Ubuntu in the fall of 2005. I remember when I got the free disc to install and also how I struggled to get Ubuntu installed. The thing that sticks with me though is the reason I was trying to install Ubuntu is because it was already said to be ready for primetime.

Ubuntu walks the edge of good enough for random computer user/good enough for super user. But in reality the facebooking/photosharing computer user would rather not have to do it on Linux.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#20
Nope. Ubuntu won't be ready until upgrading Firefox (or any individual package) doesn't force insanity like opposite window controls or Unity without asking. Regular people aren't interested in seeing drastic and seemingly nonsensical changes like that for no reason, and almost certainly aren't interested in being part of some grand OS experiment. They want something that is consistent and works.

While package management is an excellent concept, the way Linux packages are handled--with shared dependencies--is what engenders the ridiculous milestone-distro system that I think is keeping desktop Linux back. Having to swallow upgrades to every single package on the system just to get one package (like FF) upgraded means that instability and unwanted change--exactly what regular users hate--will be ingrained in the experience.

The solution, I think, is either to get rid of the shared-dependency concept and move to a more Windows-like static install system, or form a truly stable rolling-release distro. The only big one is Debian/Mint, but from what I hear that's still too unstable for even power users.

Post reply on HN