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Ten years of Ubuntu

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Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#151

Post by wanda »

cowardlydragon wrote: post #93

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…

Google doesn't want the desktop to exist at all. The last thing a big advertising company wants is power users.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#152

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#153

Post by stormbrew »

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…

> 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.

I think rather the opposite is true. The post-ultrabook era has seen an increasingly uniform PC laptop environment. There are far more laptops you can buy now that are well set up to run linux than ever before because the parts are less likely to come from TinyCompany Electronics, LLC. Taiwan and more likely to come from, say, Intel. An Ultrabook-labelled laptop post-2011 is practically guaranteed to do a good job with linux.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#154

Post by jhdevos »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #127
hiou wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> Will Windows run on it? Well... Yeah. Windows runs on everything powered by an x86 processor.

I've tried installing Windows 7 on an old Dell laptop a while ago. I got it working eventually, but had to hunt around for drivers for various things -- rather important things, like network, and video. In the end, I had to persuade some download site to give me the Windows XP drivers for the video card, and it worked with that (which, btw, is pretty awesome).

Of course, this is just anecdote, just like any story about Linux not working immediately on some modern laptop is -- but my experience is that these kinds of issues are much rarer than 10 years ago. Especially with Linux (with which I have most experience), but also with Windows.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#155

Post by eloisant »

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.

Linux Mandrake started this way but didn't have the balls to stick with their choices (KDE) and quickly included the usual "do you want KDE or Gnome?" in their setup.

Just because they were afraid to restrict their market share by excluded people who liked Gnome.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#156

Post by hiou »

tmp26 wrote: post #149
hiou wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#157

Post by eloisant »

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.

I know Mandrake Linux, and I used it for some time as my main distribution. Like Ubuntu they were striving for a user-friendly distribution, but they never got the the level of consistency Ubuntu had.

Why? Because they chose KDE at the beginning, but they didn't stick with their choice and did what every other distribution did: let users choose between KDE and Gnome. And spent time to have all their tools look "kinda OK" in both desktops with cross Qt-Gtk themes, and Gnome users got a not so great experience but they kept shouting that Gnome users were just as important to them as KDE users, etc.

So in short they thought of themselves a "Linux distribution", a way to install Linux and related software. On the other hand, Ubuntu considers itself an OS, and upstream software is just a way for them to achieve the degree of quality they want.

You see that also when Ubuntu releases Unity: they want their OS to work this way, while Mandrake always focused on (1) the installer and (2) the control panel where you configure stuff, thinking "the desktop is Gnome/KDE's job, let's just ship what they make".

There was other reasons why Ubuntu worked better than Mandrake: one is that they used the superior dpkg while Mandrake was using RPM. (RPM got better recently, but back in the day it was a huge pain). Honestly I felt for many years that a user-friendly distribution based on dpkg would bring the best of both worlds, and that's what Ubuntu was.

Also Ubuntu arrived as the right time, when it was possible to have a fully plug-and-play distribution if your hardware is standard enough. I don't think they could have achieve that in the 90's.

And of course marketing. Ubuntu have been very good at marketing, and that's a good thing.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#158

Post by lelandbatey »

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 is at the top because these complaints are valid even today. Linux doesn't cover the things I have with anything even approaching the level of convenience of Windows.

I say this not because I don't use Linux. I love Linux! I love it so much I just spent some serious time building Linux From Scratch[0] on a laptop so I can know and understand it better. I develop exclusively on * nix platforms, and I use it for everything I can.

However, my main machine is still a Windows machine with Cygwin installed. I do this because my main workflow is to use 3 portrait monitors[1] for effectively 6 workspaces visible simultaneously[2].

To get this effect, I use Nvidia surround to combine these three monitors into a single continuous desktop, then use a program called "WinSplit Revolution" to manage my windows.

I've messed around with countless tools and spent weeks worth of time trying to replicate such an environment on Linux, but I can't. The Nvidia drivers don't support surround, or if they do it's through a nearly undocumented series of settings. I can't find a program to arrange windows this way, after trying tiling window manager after tiling window manager. And, even in more mainstream settings like installing Ubuntu on my new laptop, things like my mouse pad STILL don't work.

But on Windows, I can install everything quickly and all my edge cases are covered. It may be to much to ask for Linux to cover all these, so I'm not disparaging it. I just don't use it for this case.

All I'm saying is, don't be so quick to ignore complaints about the state of things. The world of desktop Linux could still use a lot of work.

[0] -- http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

[1] -- http://i.imgur.com/z4dRbll.jpg

[2] -- http://i.imgur.com/FEumEXi.png

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#159

Post by eloisant »

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.

If you're fine with upgrading only every few years with Windows, you should be fine doing the same with Ubuntu - so just stick with the LTS and you'll have less problems. Also avoid adding third-party repositories, they can really break stuff if they replace key packages.

Considering the UI it's mostly a habit thing, personally I've never used Windows on my own computer for about 15 years and it's really a pain for me to use it each time I have to.

Re: Ten years of Ubuntu

#160

Post by aruggirello »

cowardlydragon wrote: post #93

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…

You can still install Ubuntu on a RAID0 or 1 mdadm device (I did so on a couple SSDs). You just have to use the Ubuntu Server iso instead of the Desktop one, and follow a few more steps:

http://www.ubuntulinuxguide.com/software-raid-ubuntu-14-04-s...

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