Examining gOS With Its Ubuntu Origins In Mind 110
An anonymous reader writes "The history of computing is that of giants being toppled. Right now, Ubuntu is the giant of the Linux world but some have been suggesting that gOS' latest release — 3.0 "Gadgets" Beta — might be a serious challenger. Can this be true? The truth is a little more complicated, as the Ubuntu Kung Fu blog explains in its review of the new release."
Serious challenger? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Serious challenger? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably not?
Seriously, the reason Ubuntu has been as successful as it has is because Shuttleworth can pay people to work on it.
Free open-source developers who are volunteering their time work on problems that are fun, or are hard.
Paid developers work on what someone tells them to.
In the minds of most programmers I know, there's no glory or bragging rights in building a unified user experience. .
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Shuttleworth paid their marketing team, I imagine.
Other successful software companies use marketing to increase revenue, there's no reason Canonical shouldn't.
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Shuttleworth paid for ShipIt, which got them a lot of press and users. I can't say how much it really cost -- AOL gives out CDs all the time, so it's gotta be fairly cheap.
Just as important though is that he recognized that Debian was broke, and that a lot of people agreed. Paying people to fix the problems probably earned him a lot of free marketing team members. I'm not sure he ever anticipated Canonical would get significant revenue selling support and engineering.
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Debian the community was broke in 2004. I know because I was there watching them. In 2004, they seemed to be holding a competition with XP for longest running stable release. Except XP got SP2, essentially making Debian the winner. They hid from users, they had no focus on the desktop. They did have a lot of great stuff that was just going nowhere, because they were paralyzed by vote. #debian was nearly a cess pool of wrath from people who felt they earned the right to it. They refused to integrate new tech
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Ubuntu is like one of those elven rings of power.
Debian is the One Ring to rule them all.
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Does their marketting team have anything to do with their success?
nope, everyone i know that uses ubuntu uses it because its easier to install/use and/or its nicely integrated.
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Certainly. In my mind, Zenwalk [zenwalk.org] is, hands-down, a better distro. Faster, lighter, equally compatible, large library of pre-built software, easy to maintain. Running Zenwalk makes Ubuntu feel like Windows... it really *is* that much zippier. And there's probably other distros that are of the same calibre, but I simply haven't felt any need or desire to go looking.
But Zenwalk doesn't have nearly as large a marketting weight, nor does it have the
Why I use Ubuntu and not others like Zenwalk (Score:5, Insightful)
Without thinking any less of Zenwalk, I would say that the reason I chose Ubuntu, and the reason I hope most people choose Ubuntu, is for the critical mass effect. Although it's perfectly alright for there to be an unlimited number of Linux distributions, I hope that one can emerge to be the flagship distribution, the de facto standard, so that the non-Linux world --vendors of Other Operating Systems, hardware manufacturers, and the lay public-- can have a standard distribution to see, experience and understand. If a hardware manufacturer decides that it can't possibly support all Linux distributions, at least it can say "we support Ubuntu Linux" and the other distro's can take it from there. If some noob-to-Linux goes crying for help, at least s/he there's a chance that some not-quite-geek has heard of the distro and can offer some help and support --including emotional support, where appropriate.
Red Hat had the chance to be that one flagship distro. They decided to cut it loose and focus just on big companies. Debian never really focused on the end-user experience. Mandrake (now Mandriva) came the closest to Ubuntu, in my opinion, but I guess they were missing a millionaire benefactor.
So, I hear you, and I don't think Zenwalk is any less because everyone's talking about Ubuntu. But I think Ubuntu has its place, and I think all the Linux distros benefit from Ubuntu's standing.
Having said that, can you tell me a bit more about Zenwalk and how easy it is to maintain? I briefly checked out the web page and couldn't tell if it was based on the Debian system, like Ubuntu. If it's not too far off from Ubuntu and it's able to benefit from ports to Ubuntu, then I might check it out. Because I find that one necessity in a Linux distro is the existence of a strong package maintenance institution, so that I can be confident that new software will be packaged and made available for (and compatible with) my distro.
Re:Why I use Ubuntu and not others like Zenwalk (Score:5, Informative)
It's Slack-based. But unlike Slack, it has a package-management system with dependency checking, and uses a modern 2.6 kernel. It still uses the same .tgz package format as Slack, meaning it's essentially a tarball and you can install Slack packages, as well as coming with utilities that let you convert rpm and deb packages to tgz so they can be installed, and installs packages very quickly. I can't fault apt... it is a very good tool for system management. But Zenwalk's netpkg brings all of that functionality to a Slack-based system. Like Ubuntu, Zen has restricted packages for drivers like NVidia and ATi, as well as DVD playback and MP3 encoding (which aren't actually needed most of the time). I have not yet run into a software that I use which isn't in the repo, but unlike Ubuntu, I didn't have to configure *anything* on my laptop. Everything worked out of the box (well, for performance reasons I did choose to install the NVidia binary blob driver: I play games). Even MP3 and DVD playback, and the wireless card (Intel 8945g) worked out of the box without any need to be installed or configured.
That did mean that I had to accept a non-GPL license at install time (if you decline, the non-GPL blobs and software are uninstalled), but the idea is simplicity for end users. It's designed around a one-app per task, zero configuration philosophy, and it achieves that *very* well, choosing apps that are both stable, and lightweight, and coming with driver functionality out of the box that you simply don't see on any other distro. And it's got software out of the box for everything the average user does with their computer. Finally, it's a smaller ISO, so a faster download, as well as being faster to run in general.
Bottom line: It's better for desktop linux than Ubuntu. :)
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"zero configuration" so linux for the people that miss the whole point of running linux desktop?
"zero verb" so english for the people that miss the whole point of communicating english language?
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There's a flip side to this that goes the the heart of the controversies. Without a doubt, the overriding strength of linux is the ability of configure it any way you want. However, the general population of end users don't want or need that level of flexibility; they just want the damn thing to work. Here's where Ubuntu shines.
The one big remaining problem is packages and software. For all the virtues of FOSS and GPL, in the end you're dependent on volunteers and/or sponsorship. At the end of the day,
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As distasteful as is may be to the FOSS community, I think the ability to walk into a store and buy a piece of software that works with basically any linux distro is the key to wider adoption and marketshare.
The thing is, FOSS devotees see that model as the future for software and really don't grok the need of walking into a store and buying a piece of software on a little plastic disc in a big cardboard box from the nerdy-looking-but-still-clueless sales associate in Best Buy.
FOSS advocates tend to be both quite technical and libertarian-minded (not socialist or communist as chair-throwing executives would like you to believe). To such a person (such as myself), it seems like such an antiquated notion to buy
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This is interesting and I'm sorry I was too busy to read it over the weekend.
LSB could indeed help pave the way for a truly open market of apps. The only thing is, people need to eat, so if you want them to devote serious time and effort someone, somewhere needs to pay them. Unless you have a big donor like Shuttleworth or Sun, the money has to come from somewhere and the open market beckons. Please understand that ideally, free versions of most software will eventually dominate and that the immediate go
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"zero configuration" so that you don't have to spend hours finding and installing drivers and tweaking everything so that you can use your hardware. It all works out of the box, and the only one you may possibly need to install is the binary blob driver for your video card, and that only if you want 3d acceleration, as the open source drivers which come with it are perfectly adequate for running 2d or using a scr
Who's missing the point here exactly? (Score:2)
"zero configuration" so linux for the people that miss the whole point of running linux desktop?
You seem to imply the point of Linux on the desktop is the ability to configure it without limitation. I don't recall that being the motivation behind the creation of Linux-based OSes or Linux desktops.
My first Linux desktop was a Slakware installation I loaded over the WfW 3.11/MS-DOS 6.22 setup on my 486DX. Believe me, it was NOT configuration abilities that motivated me to to try it out. WfW 3.11 and MS-DOS were simple and familiar to me from a configuration/administration perspective. I was alread
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Yet judging from the screenshots it's running the exact same apps that Ubuntu uses (ghex, gcalc, etc).
This seems like a case of you just wanting to be different from the "norm" and I very much doubt Zenwalk is any better then any other Linux OS that uses the exact same software.
Re:Serious challenger? (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is in the compilation options. Just because it's the same software doesn't mean it's the same build, and anybody who's compared performance/benchmarks under Gentoo as opposed to Ubuntu can tell you what a huge difference it can make.
Gentoo can be faster than Zenwalk (though in some benchmarks isn't), but Zenwalk is much easier to install and maintain, and they're both *hugely* faster than Ubuntu.
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For a fairer comparison, I suppose you could give Xubuntu a try.
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I did. :) It's still sluggish, and takes about twice as long to boot up. :)
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It's not entirely fair to say the success of Ubuntu is due entirely to marketing and paid developers... What about Suse, RH, Linspire etc. Many have tried before.
It think - for once - the often overused word 'vision' is appropriate
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In the minds of most programmers I know, there's no glory or bragging rights in building a unified user experience.
Fortunately, there are a few of us around who believe in getting the little things just right.
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And $deity bless you for it, because the world needs more people like you
Any chance you feel like telling a few hundred thousand unpaid programmers what to do?
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Ah, yes, but we (usually) fail less spectacularly
Marketing (Score:1, Insightful)
Shuttleworth does a great job marketing and pushing Ubuntu. He signs deals with the right vendors. People who know nothing about Linux have heard of Ubuntu.
Yet, it is my least favorite distro I've ever tried. Popularity does not necessarily equate to quality.
That being said, I'm glad people are starting to realize that alternatives exist, and Ubuntu might be a gateway to other (better) distros. I hope Ubuntu doesn't turn people off though. I wish there was more of a coordinated effort to market other d
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Speaking of DragonFly, here's this doc http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/nanosleep/index.shtml [dragonflybsd.org] about how they managed to get rid of an important timing bug to minimize the sleep/wakeup delay in nanosleep() calls. Very interesting for those in multithreaded apps.
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It is harder to change your OS than your browser. That being said, Linux could still benefit from marketing, as Ubuntu has demonstrated. The problem is that Linux isn't one big, unified community.
I'd like to see something like GetKde.org as a grassroots campaign. KDE apps can be installed on Windows and Mac OS X as a gateway, to allow people to try out OSS before making a big commitment. Pushing a desktop like KDE could be a unified project supported by several major distro communities. Many distros ea
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http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_on_Windows/Installation#KDE_Installer_for_Windows [kde.org]
There is a standard installer that will download the packages and even put them in your Start Menu.
I also enjoy your signature. Very subtle.
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umm, dare I ask, what exactly don't you like about it?
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1 - Gnome only
2 - Fairly vanilla packages
3 - Really ugly themeing
4 - Basically zero options in the install process. I get the default packages, and that is it.
5 - I could never get the ATI drivers to work well with Ubuntu on my wife's laptop, but they worked great with Sabayon and openSUSE.
6 - I compiled a custom kernel by hand, but then I couldn't get the ATI driver to load at all, because Ubuntu demands that there be a restricted module package for the kernel, and I couldn't make one for a custom kernel.
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1 - Gnome only
No, Kubuntu.
2 - Fairly vanilla packages
I have no idea what you're on about here.
3 - Really ugly themeing
It's a theme, you can change it.
4 - Basically zero options in the install process. I get the default packages, and that is it.
You get what is needed and you can do your customization after the install process. This is the best decision ever made by the Ubuntu community.
5 - I could never get the ATI drivers to work well with Ubuntu on my wife's laptop, but they worked great with Sabayon and openSUSE.
Thousands of others have no problem. Can you install these drivers by clicking "yes" to an option on these other distros?
6 - I compiled a custom kernel by hand, but then I couldn't get the ATI driver to load at all, because Ubuntu demands that there be a restricted module package for the kernel, and I couldn't make one for a custom kernel.
If you do advanced things you're expected to know what you are doing. This is the same for any linux distro.
7 - Never could get madwifi to work on Ubuntu well, when it worked out of the box with openSUSE and Sabayon.
When was this?
8 - When I asked for support in the forums I was repeatedly flamed in PMs, and on the IRC support channel. I was told that I needed to install the 32-bit version, even when I asked for help the in the 64-bit forums. I was repeatedly told the 64-bit version is unsupported, even though Cannonical sells commercial support for it.
Again, when was this? Ubuntu has one
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done this about five times on Slashdot. Someone asks me what I don't like about Ubuntu, I get modded down troll for answering a question, etc. I don't really feel like arguing, but if you really want to go point-by-point:
No, Kubuntu.
Kubuntu is a separate project worked on by seperate devs. It doesn't get the baseline Ubuntu features for precisely that reason.
I have no idea what you're on about here.
Fire up a Knoppix CD, or Kubuntu and you'll basically see a vanilla KDE desktop. They don't customize the packages, install addition patches, or do anything. Now fire up Mandriva, or openSUSE, or PCLinuxOS, or Arch's KDEMod, or Sabayon, etc. You'll see they've added other patches to expand functionality, fix bugs, backport features, etc. What is the point of 20 million distros if they all ship the same packages?
Many Ubuntu packages are largely the vanilla, upstream package with no changes. (Ubuntu has a decent number of kernel patches and toolchain patches, like many other distros, but they largely inherit these from Debian). openSUSE (my most common example recently, because it is my new favorite of all the major distros I've tried recently) hires devs to backport features, and make the best possible packages they can. Again, many Gnome users praise openSUSE for putting out a bettter Gnome desktop than Ubuntu, because they don't ship vanilla packages.
You get what is needed and you can do your customization after the install process. This is the best decision ever made by the Ubuntu community.
I'm not saying Ubuntu is wrong. I'm saying I don't like it. I want options in my install process to customize it. Ubuntu is targeted at a certain audience. I'm not a member of it. I used to recommend Kubuntu to people who weren't computer savvy and wanted something very simple, and yet I discovered that other distros were just as simple to use, while providing better packages to boot.
It's a theme, you can change it.
I always change the theme on any desktop, but you asked what I don't like. I really don't like Ubuntu brown and orange. A recent poll on the openSUSE forums showed most responders saying they never bother changing the default theme. I don't understand that. Why wouldn't you customize your desktop?
Thousands of others have no problem. Can you install these drivers by clicking "yes" to an option on these other distros?
openSUSE offers a 1-click installer. Sabayon includes them by default. Heck, Mint (a nicer fork of Ubuntu) includes them by default. I followed the instructions on Ubuntu's wiki, yet they never worked. I asked for help and was repeatedly attacked for attempting to use ATI. Mind you, on the exact same laptop (my wife's old laptop) I ran Gentoo with the ATI drivers (custom kernel, -viper release), Sabayon with the ATI drivers, and openSUSE 10.1 with the ATI drivers. The only distro I had problems with was Ubuntu.
If you do advanced things you're expected to know what you are doing. This is the same for any linux distro.
You're not seeing what I'm getting at. I know how to compile my own kernel. I've been doing it for years. Since I'm impatient, even on binary distros I compile my own kernel and manually patch in drivers rather than wait for distros to releasing updated packages. On Ubuntu and Kubuntu, after I made my own kernel, it would not load the ATI module at all. It gave me an error about how it could not load the module because it was missing a restricted modules .deb package. They've gone out of their way to patch into their kernel sources a measure to stop you from using proprietary modules. I've never seen another distro do this. For the stock Ubuntu kernels, this package exists. For custom kernels (I downloaded a -mm kernel and then patched in the Ubuntu diff. I normally always patch in that distro's patches to the kernel in case they are important). If I never patched in the Ubuntu patches, the ATI driver would
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I've done this about five times on Slashdot. Someone asks me what I don't like about Ubuntu, I get modded down troll for answering a question, etc.
I can see why. You're wrong and you seem to be uninterested in learning this.
Kubuntu is a separate project worked on by seperate devs. It doesn't get the baseline Ubuntu features for precisely that reason.
No it isn't. What gave you that idea?
Fire up a Knoppix CD, or Kubuntu and you'll basically see a vanilla KDE desktop. They don't customize the packages, install addition patches, or do anything. Now fire up Mandriva, or openSUSE, or PCLinuxOS, or Arch's KDEMod, or Sabayon, etc. You'll see they've added other patches to expand functionality, fix bugs, backport features, etc. What is the point of 20 million distros if they all ship the same packages?
Many Ubuntu packages are largely the vanilla, upstream package with no changes. (Ubuntu has a decent number of kernel patches and toolchain patches, like many other distros, but they largely inherit these from Debian). openSUSE (my most common example recently, because it is my new favorite of all the major distros I've tried recently) hires devs to backport features, and make the best possible packages they can. Again, many Gnome users praise openSUSE for putting out a bettter Gnome desktop than Ubuntu, because they don't ship vanilla packages.
Oh, so "vanilla" means "like debian".. that's ok, I like debian. Sounds like you have a different personal preference. This is probably the most legitimate thing you have said in this thread.
I'm not saying Ubuntu is wrong. I'm saying I don't like it. I want options in my install process to customize it. Ubuntu is targeted at a certain audience. I'm not a member of it. I used to recommend Kubuntu to people who weren't computer savvy and wanted something very simple, and yet I discovered that other distros were just as simple to use, while providing better packages to boot.
Again, personal preference, good for you.
I always change the theme on any desktop, but you asked what I don't like. I really don't like Ubuntu brown and orange. A recent poll on the openSUSE forums showed most responders saying they never bother changing the default theme. I don't understand that. Why wouldn't you customize your desktop?
I like the default theme, personally. I also don't really care too much about it. You obviously do and that's your preference.
openSUSE offers a 1-click installer. Sabayon includes them by default. Heck, Mint (a nicer fork of Ubuntu) includes them by default. I followed the instructions on Ubuntu's wiki, yet they never worked. I asked for help and was repeatedly attacked for attempting to use ATI. Mind you, on the exact same laptop (my wife's old laptop) I ran Gentoo with the ATI drivers (custom kernel, -viper release), Sabayon with the ATI drivers, and openSUSE 10.1 with the ATI drivers. The only distro I had problems with was Ubuntu.
When was this? I have a machine w
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I can see why. You're wrong and you seem to be uninterested in learning this.
I was civil and asked the same of you. You've failed in that regard.
No it isn't. What gave you that idea?
Talking to the devs and hearing them complain about how few people work on the project, and how they don't have communication with the Ubuntu project enough to include the major Ubuntu features in their releases. The facts are pretty clear here. Fedora, Debain, openSUSE, and every major distro pretty much includes both major
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Why can't you use <quote>? When you did your Google search for Shuttleworth comments did you happen to get the date of the comment? People change their opinions over time you know.. Actually install a the latest version of Ubuntu on a machine with a 3d graphics card.. watch as it automatically installs the restricted drivers.
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openSUSE offers a 1-click installer. Sabayon includes them by default. Heck, Mint (a nicer fork of Ubuntu) includes them by default. I followed the instructions on Ubuntu's wiki, yet they never worked. I asked for help and was repeatedly attacked for attempting to use ATI. Mind you, on the exact same laptop (my wife's old laptop) I ran Gentoo with the ATI drivers (custom kernel, -viper release), Sabayon with the ATI drivers, and openSUSE 10.1 with the ATI drivers. The only distro I had problems with was Ubuntu.
When was this? I have a machine with ATI drivers, Ubuntu installed them by default and alerted me that it had done it.
Then you probably have a desktop with a post 9600 ATI. I have three laptops with ATIs in them. They work with Fiesty but will not work with Gutsy or Hardy due to ATI dropping support in the binary. It is true however that Sabayon ships a nicer KDE and configures graphics cards properly that Ubuntu will not, I usually run a partition of both on each machine (my two favourite distros) and I have seen this many times.
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openSUSE offers a 1-click installer. Sabayon includes them by default. Heck, Mint (a nicer fork of Ubuntu) includes them by default. I followed the instructions on Ubuntu's wiki, yet they never worked. I asked for help and was repeatedly attacked for attempting to use ATI. Mind you, on the exact same laptop (my wife's old laptop) I ran Gentoo with the ATI drivers (custom kernel, -viper release), Sabayon with the ATI drivers, and openSUSE 10.1 with the ATI drivers. The only distro I had problems with was Ubuntu.
When was this? I have a machine with ATI drivers, Ubuntu installed them by default and alerted me that it had done it.
Then you probably have a desktop with a post 9600 ATI. I have three laptops with ATIs in them. They work with Fiesty but will not work with Gutsy or Hardy due to ATI dropping support in the binary. It is true however that Sabayon ships a nicer KDE and configures graphics cards properly that Ubuntu will not, I usually run a partition of both on each machine (my two favourite distros) and I have seen this many times.
If you need ATI binary support on Ubuntu and don't want to do any of that stuff manually, may I suggest EnvyNG [launchpad.net]? (Homepage is here [albertomilone.com].)
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Unfortunately that won't work with envy:
https://answers.launchpad.net/envy/+question/23594
The only way to get a working binary for the older cards is to install an ATI blob from version 8.28.8 http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/radeonprevious-linux.html [amd.com] or before. A lot of laptops use 9100s, they were dropped along with a heap of other models after this release.
You just have to give up in the end and lose most of your acceleration, or install a old distro from cd and not update it.
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Since I'm impatient, even on binary distros I compile my own kernel and manually patch in drivers rather than wait for distros to releasing updated packages.
You are not the target market for Ubuntu, why would you expect it to conform to your expectations (which frankly are pretty extreme)? Most of the things which you quote as disadvantages for you, are advantages for someone who just comes fresh to Linux, and has no idea what a kernel is, and doesn't want to read distro forums and linuxtoday every day, they just want things to work with no tinkering.
I hope Ubuntu doesn't turn people off though.
I seriously doubt it will turn people new to Linux off in any way. The only people it will turn off are those l
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You are not the target market for Ubuntu,
Funny, that is exactly what I said. I didn't blast Ubuntu. I didn't say Ubuntu was wrong. I was asked what I didn't like about Ubuntu, which is a matter of opinion, and then QuantumG busts out personal attacks, calling me a liar and such.
Repeatedly I said there is a market for Ubuntu, and I'm not it.
I can't help it if he can't read.
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You'll notice he's modded up to +5 too. Slashdot "moderators" don't read the entire thread, and these posts are too big for them to read past the first paragraph. He's openly admitted that he's talking about Ubuntu fron two years ago and yet he insists that he knows what he's talking about.
What a dick.
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BTW, I should have added. You said thousands of people have no problems with the ATI drivers. That laptop (my wife's old one) had the ATI 200M chipset. When I Googled, I found several people have problems with the drivers and that card/chipset. What I didn't find were any answers. I tried both the OSS and proprietary drivers, and never got either working fully. Search for Ubuntu, ATI 200M and you'll likely find that was the case.
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
ATI hasn't released code for those drivers actually. They've released specs and technical documents on newer, high-end Radeon cards.
When you attack someone and say that they're wrong, next time try to have facts on your side.
That doesn't change the fact that when I tried the distro, they were the only ones that had issues with those drivers.
And despite your claims that Ubuntu is the best community (seriously, check out a real helpful, knowledgable community like Gentoo) that doesn't change the fact that people attacked me for asking for help.
The facts are the facts. Your comments don't change them.
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See, the ATI Express 200M did work fine with Gentoo. This was my wife's laptop, and there were a couple issues with sticking with Gentoo.
She didn't want to wait for compiles on her laptop. It also overheated quite a bit during heavily compiling. We decided to find her a binary distro. Since I loved Gentoo, we eventually settled on Sabayon for her, but I tried Mandriva, Sabayon, openSUSE, Ubuntu and Kubuntu.
And as of this week, my home desktop is no longer Gentoo. It meant leaving behind Reiser4 (which
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So true. I should go on a rant about how I hate Redhat.. even though I haven't used it since 2001.
Or slackware.. oh wait, slackware hasn't changed since 2001.
When it comes to open source stuff one really has to keep up or shut up.
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The concept of ubuntu existed long before apartheid.
Alright, then fine. Rename it to Candy Linux. No wait, that's associated with weight problems and diabetes. How about Rose Linux? No, because roses have thorns. How about Sunshine Linux? No, that can be associated with skin cancer and global climate change. Maybe Rainbow Linux? No, that would scare off the homophobes. How about Happy Linux? Yeah, happy linux. Nothing wrong with happy! (as long as it's not associated with anti-depressant dependan
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, Robert Kiyosake, who is 99% full of crap, had a gem of wisdom in one of his books.
He told the story about how he met with a reporter who wanted to become an author, and she asked him for advice, since he had been published numerable times. His advice to her was to learn marketing. "You'll notice", he said, "that the cover of the book says 'best selling author', it doesn't say 'best writing author'".
There's a lot of truth in that statement.
Best is such a subjective term, but Ubuntu is the most successful distro in recent memory, in terms of users, name recognition, and having a unified interface.
It's certainly not perfect, but for usability and bringing Linux to the masses, it's a damn bit better than everything else out there
Sorry to all the Mepis, RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Slack, and other distro fans.
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I'd say openSUSE should be a serious contender.
* Novell will sell support.
* Novell is preinstalled on major OEM computers. * openSUSE will start an installer in Windows, resize your Windows partition automatically, and set-up a dual boot environment.
* Out of the box, it will install ntfs-3g and offer write access to your Windows partitions from within Linux.
* The installer is simple, yet powerful. The installer is fast.
* Package management in openSUSE 11 is now as good as in Ubuntu. Previous to openSUSE
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To be honest, I haven't tried open or closed SuSE since 8. I decided when they signed the pact with Microsoft that I wasn't going to use them.
I suppose I could install it in a VM and see what it's like.
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I think 11 was a really good release for them. Their KDE 4.0.4 packages had a bunch of KDE 4.1 features back-ported, but KDE 4.0.4 still wasn't something I'd recommend to anyone.
If you do decide to try out KDE 4, upgrade to the 4.1 packages right away.
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I don't want to put you on the spot, but you can blame Miguel for this:
* There's a difference between Suse and openSuSe. Having to pay for it is crappy.
* Ubuntu has ntfs-3g as well, for quite some time (maybe a bit too long, I donno)
* Ubuntu has wubi, which will install directly to your Windows partition and set up dual boot. That said, this is like competing on which bike comes with better training wheels.
* Debconf is great, has a number of frontends, and doesn't need to push patches into linuxwacom etc. I
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The real test of SUSE's new package management is going to be upgrades. Can I upgrade from 10 to 11 or from 11 to 12?
Well, upgrading from 10 to 11 can be done, but isn't necessarily easy because the RPM structure changed significantly (for the better). Going from 11 to 11.1, or to 12 shouldn't present the same problems.
but my general opinion is that if I have to configure something, there's a bug somewhere
You so nicely cemented what I was saying about Ubuntu. There is an audience for it, and that audience
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I'm not asking for immutable defaults, simply sane ones that don't ask me questions on dist-upgrade. When I want to change something, I'm glad I can. When I don't have to, I'm also glad ;)
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On a side note, does anyone remember linuxconf that used to handle virtually all configurations?
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Wubi is great - it recently let me install Ubuntu on a friend's PC to give him an option for secure web browsing (he doesn't want to do online banking on a Windows setup that has had lots of viruses). In fact, I just left Wubi running while we left the house, having kicked off the first screen - when he came back Ubuntu was working fine. Since Wubi only touches c:\boot.ini, not the boot sector, this is quite a low risk thing to do, unlike most Linux installs. Wubi still has some bugs that prevent it work
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The only distros I won't use are those from vendors who have signed patent deals with Microsoft. I don't see why I should help Microsoft make money from Linux, and there are plenty of other distros to choose from if you don't like Ubuntu - for example, I believe PCLinuxOS and Mandriva are also good for desktop users.
Personally I use Ubuntu everywhere that I can and am about to try Ubuntulite on a 96 MB Pentium 233 laptop, where it should work pretty well - it uses LXDE and has low resource requirements, ye
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gOS.... (Score:2)
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Really for Linux to win they just need to know it isn't Windows.
It might actually be in linux's favor if users don't even know that.
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It might actually be in linux's favor if users don't even know that.
Ok, but search for gOS tutorials online and you won't find very many. Search for Ubuntu and you will find a ton (and most work for gOS), search for Linux tutorials and you will find more than you ever could need. If someone can't get something working in gOS, chances are someone on the super-active Ubuntu forums has had the same issue and fixed it, but the typical user finding nothing on the home page that said it was even Linux would not even think of searching Ubuntu's site.
Walk into any book store
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The main page for gOS nowhere mentions Ubuntu or even Debain, heck, Linux isn't even mentioned! The main page for Ubuntu clearly states that it is A) Linux and B) made from Debian, as of now it even has a banner celebrating Debian.
You mean like Apple's homepage talks about Darwin and BSD, or Microsoft's homepage talks about NTOSKRNL? Or Motorola sells its linux phones [motorola.com] with strong LiMo branding? (game: count the number of times the work 'Microsoft' appears on that page)
Ubuntu may garner some geek cred there
Re:gOS.... (Score:4, Informative)
gOS 3 Gadgets BETA is based on the solid Linux distribution base of Ubuntu 8.04.1.
and also
Designed for NetBooks & NetTops
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Not mentioning Linux on their Intro Page seems like a pretty insignificant downside to their OS. And I reckon everyone actively thinking of installing a new OS should and would do the necessary research to at least know what it is they are installing.
Regarding the article itself: Seeing as gOS openly announces it is Designed for
Sounds shit. Why bother? (Score:2)
The article concludes that you should try it out, but why bother? It sounds shit, and I don't have the time to fuck around with a shitty distro focused on Google crap that I don't even use.
It sounds half put together (take the dock, which just relaunches programs rather then displays already running programs), the problems with Compiz, and to quote the article:
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It sounds half put together (take the dock, which just relaunches programs rather then displays already running programs)
It's just Avant, a poor clone of the OS X dock. It is in beta and nowhere ready for production use in my opinion. You'd think they could at least wait till it worked before adding it to their product.
Oh yeah, and the review didn't mention a word processor besides the Google Docs (which the reviewer could get to work off line in any case), I'll be sure not to load this distro up for the next twenty four hour plane ride I take (about one or two ever year recently).
From the article, "OpenOffice Writer, Calc and Impress". Also three colored OpenOffice icons are shown in the dock in the screenshots.
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My mistake, they replaced Avaunt in this version with some other dock clone, which, reportedly, does not require Compiz, but has even more functionality problems.
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Oh yeah, and the review didn't mention a word processor besides the Google Docs (which the reviewer could get to work off line in any case), I'll be sure not to load this distro up for the next twenty four hour plane ride I take (about one or two ever year recently).
But apt-get install is easy to install things that it doesn't have included. The same complaint would be relevant to MS because Windows doesn't have a word processor either.
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Blogspam? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point (Score:1)
It looks like they've designed a version of linux to run web apps, which are by their design, supposed to work on virtually every existing PC with a browser already, seems kinda pointless- they've just added widgets, which could have been a single application. Just for reference of how well ubuntu can be adapted, have a look at mint- much more user friendly (for customizations), that's where I'd go for an ubuntu-like distro.
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...and a web app sure loads a lot faster than OOo.
Except, it comes with OO too.
Twice nothing is still nothing (Score:2)
.
The $150 clearance special, in store only.
"Step up to the Everex Vista Basic system with 1 GB RAM for only $68 more."
In the states - the OEM Linux system with bottom-feeder specs and the shelf life of a housefly remains the reality in big box retail.
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.
You're quite right, of course.
But that is just rubbing salt into the wound.
gOS...meh... (Score:1)
Why leave Ubuntu? (Score:2)
For many a lot of traction OSs get is because they are looking for something better. I don't know about many of you but so far there hasn't been anything compelling my to go past Ubuntu, it just works, is well updated and the community is great. Then again same goes for KDE 3.x for me right now.
What got me to Ubuntu was dissatisfaction with one element or another form different distributions, like package management, hardware support, proprietary can rattling, etc.
What could gOS do? Look at what people w
e17 (Score:2)
Different Default Linux Software! So what? (Score:2)
Computer users just want to use the programs they like. Focus should be on new and great Linux software and on improving it, not on some group who packaged certain software together. You like the "dock" program they are using? Cool, sho