Nerd alert: First Lucid Lynx Ubuntu beta fun Lucid Lynx, Ubuntu 10.04 that Friday entered the beta stage, looks to be taking the popular distro to an entirely new and very consumer-oriented level. Between Canonical's web-based syncing service Ubuntu One - unveiled last year - the coming U1 music store, and the new Me Menu, Lucid Lynx is looking less like the stoic Linux …
i'm not very penguin experienced.. if i want to improve how the front end looks, what's the best thing a nonce can do to improve it and make it a look little more impressive? without having to go to any great lengths.. and, please, there's a free rectal cactus implant for the first person to advise bye a mac/winbox/whatever.
How do you define that?
Most of these desktop environments are really fairly flexible and customizable. Just have to rtfm.
Personally I think gnome is ok but bloated. I also think ubuntu as a distro is bloated. Maybe that's why there's so much brown in it, 'cos it's full of s.... :P
xfce imho, but ymmv.
"i'm not very penguin experienced.. if i want to improve how the front end looks, what's the best thing a nonce can do to improve it and make it a look little more impressive?"
Check out the art and themes pages under http://www.gnome.org. See http://art.gnome.org/themes for desktop customizations you may want to try out. You may want to create an extra local user id on Ubuntu for testing these out, rather than taking the risk of hosing the gnome desktop config for your primary user id.
Granted, Ubuntu's brown is looking a bit tired after a some years. But purple and orange? Yecch. I think I'll keep my boring old shades of blue and grey.
Gnome has a few useful building configuration tools but for full-on GUI I tend to prefer KDE. For day-to-day use I prefer minimal environments like twm or openbox. Right in the middle you have XFCE. Chose your own.
I'm not very familiar with Ubuntu but I have extensive knowledge of its older brother, Debian, so I suspect that you should only need to install the relevant packages, and chose your environment at graphical startup time (ctrl + backspace to restart the X server). (I suppose that GDM is still the default x session manager). If that doesn't work, try and RTFM...
If you are looking to improve the desktop appearance and give it a cool factor, look for compiz-settings-manager in the software center or synaptics package manager. This will allow you to enable things like the cube desktop, window animations, wobbly windows, etc.
Cube desktop is by far the most useful eye candy I have ever used. Works much better than the standard desktop pager when trying to navigate through applications with a lot of screen updates. I use it with my recording software to navigate between my mixing, editing and mastering programs.
Last time I used GNOME, it was generally a case of heading over to gnome-look.org and having a leaf through. Select the shiny bits you want, download them, and drag and drop them onto the appropriate settings box. Done! Though you should be aware that Firefox has some issues with dark themes - take a look at the gnome-look page for a theme called Divinorum Revisited for a fix.
Me, I'm a KDE user, so I have the rather nifty Get Hot New Stuff system (no seriously, that's what it's called). It launches from inside the various theming panels, and lets me browse theming options and install them with one button click. It's not perfect yet, but it's a very cool feature. I'd love to see how it's improved in Lucid, but alas, Ubuntu give less and less of a crap about KDE users - do we at least get Ubuntu One with this release?
Look up the emerald window manager (there should be tutorials online for how to use it; the packages are in the standard repos, I think). It lets you install very fancy themes.
You also want to look for tutorials on compiz. Install the compizconfig-settings-manager and gnome-color-chooser packages.
Go to gnome-look.org for themes. You can install them from System>Preferences>Appearance.
If you are going to stick with gnome, you can obtain eye candy either as individual bits or as whole themes from places like http://gnome-look.org/
http://ubuntusatanic.org/ for example has some interesting ideas and a simple explanation of how to load them.
Mostly you can use the package manager to suck them from repositories, like everything else.
If you are not going to stick with gnome, you can try things like
http://www.enlightenment.org/
http://www.afterstep.org/
after installing them you can just pick them as an alternative to your default gnome session when you log in.
Goody! I remember that one of the turn-offs of Linux is that starting with Red Hat 9, they started disabling the mp3 codec because of "patent problems". OGG support is nice, but useless outside the nerdy geek community. MP3 is by far the standard for most everyday users, lack of MP3 support won't bring in the "mortal" users to Linux. Nice to see that Ubuntu is actually taking back mp3 into their distro! :)
And mark my word.
It's a very dumb format, which was pushed by hardware vendors only for cross-licensing reasons. Ogg will continue to grow (it integrates video capabilities, too) while MP3 reached its peak and will now begin its descent into oblivion as audio-only devices disappear....
Ubuntu does have a few real hippies at the higher levels, hence the "free" and "non-free" repositories, and previous distros not coming with support for anything proprietary out of the box - not even via a simple "do you want the stuff we don't like?" button. Yeah, nice one guys, Joe Average will love having to add a repository and install "restricted" packages just to watch DVDs/play his music...
....are real when you are the software vendor, Redhat had no choice but to remove the patented stuff from its distributions. On install it takes all of 5 seconds to enable the RPMFusion repo and it's all back.
Also, Ogg is available in a stunning number of products, but it isn't listed to avoid frightening the horses. Nearly all Samsung media players support it, and certainly all the Android phones do.
And not *all* of those are bought by geeks! And anyway, what's wrong with geeks anyway. We should rule the world....;-)
Give me a break, you're talking about how this is the version of linux for consumers, and then harp that the music store offers it's tracks in mp3 format? Listen, ogg may be "better" to some, but the fact is mp3 is more the good enough for the general public, and if you try and have a music store that doesn't sell mp3s you WILL fail in this day and age.
The mp3 support isn't installed by default by the way, it will install when you buy music.
The parent problems still exist and only those legal barriers preventing mp3 support on install make ogg vorbis superior,
Of course since rythembox will transcode for your devices, I don't think it's too much of a problem to have ogg and never know it.
9.04, 8.10, 8.04 didn't. But 9.10 did.
In my case, it was down to the proprietary NVidia drivers. If I used the generic drivers, it was fine - but I lost Compiz.
Compiz or suspend. Difficult choice. Not.
Anyway - for me, the problem wasn't Ubuntu or Linux or FOSS - it was the closed-source NVidia drivers.
"Ubuntu founder March Shuttleworth has set Linux the target of beating Apple on the desktop in terms of features and polish. Has he delivered with his Lucid Lynx?"
This sounds like a good release of Ubuntu with some worthwhile improvements, but this kind of blinkered focus on Ubuntu and even more tightly on Shuttleworth is kind of depressing.
Let's take a look at the next paragraph:
"all my hardware was supported, including my NVidia graphics card"
obviously this is important to you. Funny, then, that Canonical / Ubuntu / Shuttleworth do almost zero work on hardware support. Your NVIDIA graphics card works thanks to the nouveau developers - led by Red Hat's Ben Skeggs - if you're using that open driver, or thanks to NVIDIA themselves if you use the proprietary driver. All your other hardware? Nope, not thanks to Ubuntu either. Thank Red Hat, Novell, Intel...just about anyone but Ubuntu. (note, I work for Red Hat, this is a personal post, not representative of my employer, blahblah.)
"even my iPhone showed up in Nautilus thanks to the latest version of libgpod"
...which is mostly written by Mandriva's Christophe Fergeau.
You are obviously right. The Ubuntu crowd mostly adapted work from othe members of the OSS community. But let's compare apples with other rosacea fruits... MS people never, ever developped any comparable driver. Mind you, they even never _participated_ in the developpment. So in a way, as bastardised as Ubuntu may be, as a rule of thumb you can still thank Ubuntu (or, in that case, Debian. Or whichever distro you chosed, or depend on) for the hardware drivers. No matter who did the real work: you personnally are closer to getting credits for that than the MS crew (even if you didn't do fuck all).That's the MS magics for you: 1) strong-arm the hardware makers into writing Windows-only drivers; 2) try and steal credits for said drivers.
Red Hat, Novell and Intel don't have to carry a huge user base. They're quite happy living in their windows desktop happy worlds where they don't have to dedicate resources to user focus.
Ubuntu however has users who don't contribute, there just isn't the time to look after both hardware support and users with the tiny budget and small technical community.
quite often in the linux world, it's defined as "there is a kernel module for this" and userland programs to leverage said support aren't mentioned. The work ubuntu does is integration work i.e. ensuring that the nvidia drivers can be downloaded and auto-updated via the package management system, in sync with kernel updates, instead of having to manually recompile the kernel module with every update, which is what you have to do with the nvidia-supplied module
ubutnu are very obviously standing on the shoulders of others - almost all the software is written by other people, and even the package management owes everything to debian - but they are still adding value
Butthurt much? All the fine specimens of hackerdom you mentioned are perfectly happy to work for free - in fact, I'm sure they evangelise their position to anyone, whether they want to listen or not. Ubuntu use this to their advantage, and to the advantage of their users, who mostly won't give a thimbleful of fresh iguana faeces about who wrote the stuff anyway.
If they actually manage to turn the egofest of criminally abysmal user interfaces that is Linux into something that is viable for consumers, so much the better. Not that I'm likely to switch from OS X anytime soon, of course, but then again, unlike most Linux advocates, I actually use my computer to earn money*.
* for values of money approaching a bloody pittance.
I read this article the other day and thought, yeah why not give it a go on an old laptop (Siemens Amilo) just to see what all the fuss is about. So i spent 5 hours yesterday including the download time, trying to get an iso image on cd to boot.
I tried the beta first, then the latest supported version on 3 different machines all written on a CD-R as recommended......and at the slowest speed.
So, after that, and utterly pissed off, i took an old copy of the Sarge Debian kernel, written with the same burner on the same machine, and with exactly the same media,4 years ago, and it boots and loads without any trouble at all.
So i agree, you must have got lucky with the hardware support.
Just another case of bullshit i'm afraid.
I've never heard of a Siemens Amilio before, ever. Been in the business for decades. Now I did use to see some fujitsu laptops like 12 years ago, but haven't come across one since.
Apple, Dell, HP, and Linovo (IBM) all very popular, and you will see the occasional Asus, Toshiba and Sony. That's the big guys. Maybe i missed an obvious one, but if you laptop isn't one of those listed, and you bought it more than 3-4 years ago, you shouldn't expect it to work effortlessly. If I have a 2 year old Dell, or HP I should more reasonable expect various OS to have done the effort for it work out of the box.
Someone with their head screwed on that's happy to point out that Ubuntu is little more than a bundle of other people's hard work with the majority of their "contributions" to upstream being little more than self-serving tweaks.
There's nothing inherantly wrong with that, but I'm sick of articles like this suggesting that Cannonical is doing all the development work here.
I know someone who works for Cannonical's design department who, with a straight face, told me the other day that 50% of Ubuntu is community developed and 50% is Cannonical's code. Even their own employees are buying into Shuttleworth's distortion field.
Canonical may not be doing a lot of the development work, but they are doing the bits Red Hat et al are failing to do (at least well(, namely bundling the right bits together, promoting and distributing, and supporting users. And excelling at it. Open Source means you don't need to re-invent the wheel, you can take other peoples work and add what you are good at to the mix, to the benefit of society at large.
Like every good development they are standing on the shoulders of giants. And many other smaller fish are standing on their shoulders too.
This is what is great about open source. If Ubuntu takes all this great software code, and makes it easier to use on their OS, Redhat, etc, can turn around and make their distro that much easier to use too.
Redhat I think is at fault themselves for retreating into a niche. They saw Enterprise support contracts as their main revenue source, and appeared to the market to have abandoned any plans at being a significant player in the home-user desktop market.
So 50%.... well first off assume this is common speech, and not meant to be a scientific fact.
It's not entirely unreasonable (especially from their work-day perspective) that people at Cannonical could feel that half of what comes out of their OS is their work. It also depends on how you weigh the "total package" that is the OS.
Say you bought a Cell phone - One ergonomic engineer may think that the phone is 90% his device, and that the software only counts for 10%. The software programmer probably feels the same in reverse about the silly hardware that runs his precious code, a matter of perspective.
If Ubuntu is easier to use/install for average users, that is a major value add, and a real tangible benefit.
So is 90% of the OS the underlying Kernel?
How much would each application account for?
As much as the coders may think otherwise: marketing, presentation, packaging, ergonomics, easy of use, etc. are all EXTREMELY important factors to the average PC user. MUCH more so than the software code, or even security. The average user cares about who wrote the code in their machine as much as they care who painted the numbers on their keyboard (hint: they don't ever think about either).
Ubuntu has done major contributions to Linux with the development of their OS. If Debian, RedHat really have that much work-hours going into desktops, they should be able to freely adopt all of Ubuntu's work also.
That is the nature of a community project people!
I've been beta testing the Ubuntu One Music Store for a while now and the 3 download limit is really not an issue. As soon as you buy a track (or indeed a full album) the MP3 files get transferred to your cloud storage in the background, directly from 7digital servers. Once there any computers that are connected to your Ubuntu One account will automagically get the music. It works really nicely. I have four machines connected to my U1 account and the music just 'appears' on all of them.
I have no need to go and manually download the files - thus consuming more of my limit of 3 - because they're downloadable from http://one.ubuntu.com/ storage and they're already on all my machines. I'd have to be some kind of idiot to lose every single copy (and all backups) of media before I went and had to download again.
I'm sure someone will though. :)
"Also a bit disappointing is the three-download limit"
The ever popular iTunes only *officially* allows you to download a song once (though if you lose everything I hear they will consider a one off redownload on a case by case basis if you put in a support request), so I'd say 3 is actually a move in the right direction
Don't use the fglrx drivers, they don't work with the bundled Xorg properly yet - at least not with my HD4850.
The open source drivers bundled with it, however, work fine - my biggest bugbear with recent Ubuntu's on my Big Box has been tearing on the display [videos, compositor, etc] which made me stick with Windows 7 RC - this release has VSync properly sorted it seems.
The fglrx binary not working is a known issue apparently - if you do end up wanting to try it, don't forget that in usr/lib/shared/ati there is an uninstall script too - that removed the prorietary driver, and a reboot got me back on the FLOSS one perfectly.
I;m really liking 10.04 Alpha3 [updated to Beta] though - it's very nicely done.
Now, to get those window management controls back on the right hand side...
Steven R
The ATI provided drivers are required to get the best out of your system. They release a new one every month, but some are distinctly better than others. Older versions are available from their website. My HD3200 borked using Feb's driver, but Jan's is fine, keeping my fingers crossed for the march one which should be out any day now..
Decent drivers from ATI would help linux along enormously. Must admit though, they are improving.
Nigel: there's always the Ubuntu Alternate distro if you want to remove the "commercial" parts that you don't like or you're free (in every sense) to use Debian if you want to be pure of heart.
Don't diss the mainstream Ubuntu distros for doing just that: going mainstream to popularise a quality Open Source OS among non-geekdom. If this happens then maybe one day us geeks can give up our Virtual Box Windows VMs as Linux gets much broader support from software and hardware vendors.
Most of the bugs will remain well after the release date, and many will stay forever, there will be lots of regressions.
And unfortunately for all, this is what one of the best Linux distro is.
Imagine the bad ones.
And what is with the stupid button change on the windows, who asked for that?
And most of them will remain well after the release date, and there are a lot of regressions...
Come on, I have been running ubuntu since 6.04.
For every five steps ahead, one of them is to the side, and two backwards. The thing moves forward faster than let's say "Debian", but in mr Shuttleworth's roadmap the word "polish" occupies a non urgent place.
Having said this, I seriously think that the penguins in whatever incarnation are the future, however at this very moment Ubuntu is not the one to rule them all.
"A lot of Gnome is still slightly annoying and OSX just leaves it dead in the water.
But still.
Linux - love the ethos - hate the GUI."
Ehh.. don't use gnome.. there's more than just gnome.. or kde... try xfce.
Did I ever say I liked xfce? :P
Macs are nice but they have idiosyncracies and definite cons - let's just talk UI and input devices.. windows don't have menu bars. trackpad has only one button (this is the stupidest and most stubborn thing apple keep insisting on)... what else? stupid keyboards are nonstandard. machines cost too much.
This is being typed on a mac running debian btw.
I've run them all at one time or another.
KDE (crashes a lot)
Enlightenment - beautiful but idiosyncratic
Blackbox - too minimal for me
Fluxbox - see above
XFCE - hmmm, OK I suppose but annoying in places
Rox
Windowmaker - just plain weird
Which is why I use Macs. Not to knock the effort of the Open Sourcer's and I adore the ethos behind it.
But...
OSX is a thing of beauty.
Installing Debian on a Mac is like buying a Ferrari and ripping out the engine and replacing it with a 2 stroke lawnmower engine. IMHO
"Installing Debian on a Mac is like buying a Ferrari and ripping out the engine and replacing it with a 2 stroke lawnmower engine. IMHO"
More like ripping out the engine and replacing it with the monster you normally get in a Formula One car. Needs careful, professional handling or you'll either blow yourself up or end up wrapped around a lamp post in short order.
But yes.
I haven't given KDE much of a chance, admittedly, I just take one look at it and think "eugh bloat" when I see all the crap they bundle with it. And many of the innovations appear fairly counter intuitive to me. It's not bad per se.. it's just unfamiliar. Makes me feel like a n00b all over again.
I've also tried XFCE. It's nice. I liked it until I realised the shutdown button doesn't run with the appropriate permissions to actually shut down the system. I asked for help, got none, and ditched it shortly afterwards. Sure I could have made some sort of bash file and linked to that on my desktop and typed in my admin password every time but eugh. I just want to click a button to make my computer STFU once I'm too tired to continue using it. Why can't it be easy.
A couple of errors in this story that should be pointed out:
1. When you buy music from the U1 store it is *automatically* synced to the cloud. That means that whilst 7Digital says there's a 3-download limit you needn't worry about it; the music will automatically be on all your U1-linked machines.
2. The choice of MP3 was not Canonical's; it was what 7Digital offered because it's what the record companies with whom they work offer.
All the obligatory integrated music store crap in Windows is one of the big reasons I use Ubuntu. Imagine my disappointment to read that some stupid teenage-minded marketing droid thinks its a good idea to drag all this moronic bloatware over to my favourite distro. I mean what the F has all this crapware got to do with an operating system?
I really hope they packed this crap up sensibly so for us grown-ups that want a professional system, it is easily uninstallable without ripping chunks of necessary functionality out too. Perhaps its time to find another distro if Ubuntu is going down the same path as Microsoft, Apple et al that everyone necessarily must be an ipod-addicted facebook junkie.
Well I may be a user of one of the more 'stoic' distros out there (Slackware - probably forever,) and as such I've never really though Ubuntu was 'doing it right,' but now they seem to have just entirely lost it, with this latest round of ground-breaking 'enhancements.'
Give me 80x24 (monochrome, even) over this modern, trendy crap any day. Not that I don't use a window manager almost always, but I'd definitely prefer screen in a console to any environment that integrated social networking as a feature.
Guess I'm just stubborn like that.
Many moons ago, before PCs, when text only VDUs ruled, I remember reading an article on display colour.
They tested Amber, Green and White output VDUs. Guess which was most restful on the eyes?
That's right, Amber.
So, IMO Canonical had it right with the African/Burnt Umber theme.
Conversely, when you are in your app, full screen, does it really matter?
And if that's all they keep faulting Ubuntu on, show how good the rest of it is.
I can see where Ubuntu is ok for casual users, but I'm not personally a big fan of it for development use, mainly because unlike other distros, there's no option to control what gets brought in in the install process, and the biggest headache it gives me is that everything then gets tied to metacity. I'd rather have the ability to select windowmaker from the get-go and bring in all the various development packages I know I'll need, rather than hunting stuff down one at a time later. Like a lot of operating systems, it needs a "I'm a professional, damnit." button. SuSE treats me better in that regard, while for casual use I prefer OS-X (and no, I don't think Ubuntu will ever be nicer). Unfortunately, Ubuntu's rep for being an "easy" linux distro is making it more common as a development platform, and I can't really avoid it.
Adam Williamson 1 wrote:
Let's take a look at the next paragraph:
"all my hardware was supported, including my NVidia graphics card"
Last time i installed RHEL with an NVidia card, it worked fine, so long as my resolution was 800x600 and had no 3d accelleration. To make it actually useful, I had to go download the drivers from NVidia, make sure the developer package was installed, and have NVidia compile a new driver binary for me, then reboot.
with Ubuntu, the NVidia drivers a just a single click away. And that's why the reviewer included that statement above. Installing Linux with an NVida card, and having it actually work properly out of the box, is a rare thing, even these days. And the fact that it works in Ubuntu is just as much their doing, as it is the NVidia guys'.
Sounds like RedHat is bummed that all the kids (and regular users) are opting for the nicer Ubuntu experience (and getting lots of good deserved PR for it)
Maybe instead of complaining about people happily using/reviewing Ubuntu, you should get off your ass an improve the usability of your distro. And not that beta testing ground Fedora, but for RHEL.
(Disclamer I work for no Linux distro, but have to manage thousands of Linux boxes all day long in render-farm scenarios - and Ubuntu (& Debian) usability far exceeds that of RHEL any day of the week).
Just for the sake of polemics, I would like to say that there are already a couple of dumbed-down OSes aimed at people who do not want to know how computers work. They are called "MSWindows" and *AppleOS". As much as I appreciate Cannonical's efforts to draw people away from closed, expensive operating systems, I have a philosophical question: do we really need yet another OS encouraging user laziness? I'm all for the "free-as-in-beer"approach, if only for the pressure that it puts on the commercial mammoths, but should the open-source community forget the user-education aim that was one of its roots? I might be mislead because I don't follow Ubuntu releases very closely, but to me it does seem that Ubuntu is consistently moving away from the "everything can be comprehensively customised with a text editor" way, to be closer to a "don't bother to think, we're taking care of everything" philosophy. It looks suspiciously like the evolution of MSWindows or AplleOS a few decades ago. +5 for user-friendliness, -5 for encouraging users' dumbness. And an added -5 for making text-editor-based administration harder on purpose.
Flame on, me buckaroos!
I've had no trouble customising my Ubuntu desktop with my somewhat exotic email requirements which go way beyond what I've ever seen achieved on Windows or Mac. Under the hood it's little different from its parent Debian distribution which I still use on my hosted server and this gives it the customisability needed. However, having things just work with popular defaults and being able to use GUI administration tools for the most common things saves me time where I do not want to have to spend it. Also without the Ubuntu ease of use, my 90 year old Dad would probably have had to give up using a computer once he had to replace his Windows 98 system a couple of years ago. Windows XP was then no longer a desktop option from his preferred hardware supplier (Dell) and the demands Vista was making upon him on his new computer were completely beyond his tolerance threshhold.
MS windows and AppleOS were geek-only once, too Remember the Apple ][, or to a slightly lesser extent Windows 3.2. Then they both evolved to "something my grandpa feels confortable about". Not a bad thing /per/ /se/, but look at the result. Multi-million machines botnets, chain mails, AOL, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, for fuck's sake! Browsing the web is now as extreme an experience as being a psychic with no input filter. I don't give a rat's ass about your last bowel movement, man, why would you share that with the whole world? Hey, that's a funny vid for sure but was it worth turning your computer into an evil spam-spewing zombie? I say we stop making it easier and easier to do stupid things for the sake of laziness, and we start educating people. No click-and-forget config option? Why don't you RTFM! That way you might actually know what you're doing.
"saves me time where I do not want to have to spend it"
Well, I'm used to RTFM and the bloody useless poorly documented point-and-click-and-it-MIGHT-work-if-you're-lucky things make me waste time where I do not want to spend it.
I have had Alpha 3 on my netbook for a couple of weeks, with very few problems.
The latest Beta updates came down this morning, and now:
the panel does not load
evolution mail has disappeared off the menus (had to put it back myself)
no access to the file manager
Thought this sort of problem was supposed to ironed out by a Beta release
that I no longer think about my linux desktops and laptops very much. I just use them. everything works out of the box, wireless, openoffice installed by default, latest versions of software, working with mobile broadband, and even has the mentioned gwibber.
OK I'm using the Ubuntu based Linux Mint 8 (becuase it is not brown, has all the codecs as standard, has thunderbird (with the lightning calendar) as standard), but really those are just personal preferences - this ease of use applies to most recent Linux distros.
Linux is perfectly ready for primetime unless of course your local IT dept wont let you, but for many, perhaps esp the orgs with the mentioned mac users, it has to be worth it.
Canonical need to get with the program. They want to compete with Win7 and OS X? Well just look at their GUIs compared with Gnome. Gnome lags behind Windows and OS X by years, KDE OTOH is actually ahead of the game.
Now I know there will be plenty of replies along the lines of "I don't need no fancy GUI" and of course, this being Linux, "I do everything from the command line" but if Canonical are aiming for Windows 7 and OS X users then they are not aiming for the old school techy. They need to drop Gnome as the main GUI if they want to attract more users.
Yes I know you can get Kubuntu or change Ubuntu over to KDE, but unfortunately it's Ubuntu that gets all the publicity and seeing Gnome most Windows and OS X users will think they're looking at something from ten years ago. If Canonical want to take a big leap in terms of user numbers then they need to make the change and stop waiting on those promises that the next version of Gnome will have all the bells and whistles.
I'll bet it don't play MP3's straight from the box !
If Ubuntu's earlier incarcerations are anything to go by, it's all peguin fluff and not a grain of truth about greater security, stability, Windows desktop replacement, blah, bloody blah, blah blah,
Look what I'm getting at is this,
Firefox is totally fucked up when running under any sort of Linux, (in my experience since November last.)
Seamonkey is rather more than a little wonky, when compared to the same app when running under Microshaft OSes.
If you need a browser that works under Linux, you will have to go looking for Opera.
Don't try to play your MP3s, your .wav files or your movies either, (in my experience)
Flash adds on this web site kill browsers dead after 5 minutes, under Ubuntu or OpenSuse.
And no it isn't the box, as everything worked just fine under the horror that was Windows XP.
And if you don't mind a failed update trashing your master boot record so the poor old PC doesn't know where to start afterwards, go ahead,
bleed for us baby.
I am so fed up with reading all this YANKEE "we are the greatest" bollox.
Penguin SHIT; Basefuck, Twatter indeed.
Why not preload MS fuckin' N and IE9 while you are at it ?
Come back and tell me when it actually WORKS ! Then I can get some bleedin' work done !
ALF
He does have a point, there is quite a lot that 'doesn't' work out of the box, DVD playback anyone? Yes you can 'get' it to work, but its not 'out of the box' like quite a lot of things that are 'standard' in other OS's.
The overall GUI is very clunky, still 80's looking, quite Win 3.1 in window design, this doesn't seem to have moved on in years, whereas Win7 and Mac OS are light years ahead. Yes again you can jazz it up by adding stuff and tweaking with the settings, if you have the time, but again not out of the box.
After a hard day at the office, not many of us have time to sit down for hours and hours, fiddling with the computer to get it to do what we want, some of us have a 'Life'!
I do use Ubuntu, its my main OS, I like it, (I know that doesn't come across), but its never going to convince the M$ or Mac crowd over, due to its severe lack of functionality, dated user interface and poor user experience, there is a Lot of work still to do.
"He does have a point, there is quite a lot that 'doesn't' work out of the box, DVD playback anyone?"
DVD Playback works just fine out of the box, assuming your dvd uses STANDARD mpeg2 video and audio streams (not AC3).
Playback of PROTECTED dvds is only a click or two away.
If you want to play 'em in something that isn't a goat's dinner (I hate the default Ubuntu video player) VLC is, surprise surprise, just a click away.
Windows "ease of use" has turned most computer users into morons who can't do ANYthing unless their favorite software comes preloaded. The claim that Linux fails simply because Copy-Protected DVDs cannot be played "out of the box" is ridiculous.
If you want a DVD player, go buy one for $30 at Walmart.
Do you feel better for that?
Now, what's all this nonsense about "YANKEE we are the greatest"? Have you seen where the developers of all the commercial operating systems are based?
Have you thought to look at each of the problems you experienced with Linux, for solutions? Like so many people need to do for Windows OSs? (Zero problems here, by the way with my hardware and Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Mandriva).
Are you suffering a lot of stress recently? Have you thought about taking a break? Have you thought about seeing a doctor about that impending heart attack?
Firefox is not totally fucked (since actually running 9.10 since november last, using firefox exclusively).
I have never used Seamonkey, so I guess you can have that one.
See first point.
The MP3 codec is proprietary code, and more than likely cannot be included with Ubuntu by default. One quick download later and you're all up and running, if it doesn't do it out of the box.
I don't see Flash advertisments. Images yes, text yes, Flash NO. Flashblock is your friend. I've used iPlayer to watch movies (In The Loop most recently: 1hr40m) without issue, after a little tinkering (all detailed on the Ubuntu forums).
As for updates... Wow. God forbid, you've never experienced a power cut while installing a service pack. Or downloaded an AV update which downloaded several core DLLs. Drive-by virus installation? I reboot Ubuntu for kernel updates ONLY.
So, in short, by my experience you're wrong.
Developer1: Everything looks promising, so what can we do to mess this up ?
Developer2: How about move the minimise, maximize and close buttons to the left-hand corner and change their order ?
Developer1: Great! that is sure to work and upset loads of people...
I am a big fan of Ubuntu but I do have to question what complete fool decided to do this...
Just as they look like hitting the mainstream, someone decides that they know better...
There seems to be some bizarre streak of masochism running through some Linux users. They recoil at the suggestion that a simple, consistent, task oriented user experience might be a good thing. Not only for novices but experts too. Maybe some people enojy searching readmes and hand editing files to tweak some trivial setting (in which case the terminal app is still there) but I guarantee many, many more would prefer a simple dialog box.
The sad part is it has been obvious for a long time what Linux needs yet virtually every dist in has had usability holes you could drive a truck through. Some like Red Hat / Fedora are refined and polished but still couldn't claim to be usable by mere mortals. Ubuntu is demonstrates that you can make a usable desktop.
I just hope in their rush to slap on music, cloud apps etc. that they don't neglect the basics. Many dists have fallen to kitchen-sink-itis and sometimes less is more.
Ubuntu is my primary desktop in the office - I recently switched from Debian Testing because I got sick of constant 'fixing' - and I also use Ubuntu as the base for my MythTv box.
Ubuntu is the BEST thing that's happened to Linux for a decade. I've pretty much tried every distro since 1996, was a die-hard slackware fan for years, got switched onto Debian and the inevitable switch to Ubuntu didn't take long.
It's Debian polished and 'humanised' - I've done my time compiling kernels, buggering around with custom desktops, compiling stuff from source - bored of it now and this is where Ubuntu shines - it keeps me using Linux on the Desktop, without it, I would've given up long ago.
Ubuntu just works - I don't have to dick about in the command line just getting the OS working, instead, I can use the command line to do my work - mysql, apache - web development.
That's how it *should* be - unless your a linux developer of course!
Much kudos to Shuttleworth and the team for making a linux desktop for geeks who don't want to spend thier time 'tinkering' under the hood, but need to get work done.
Yes ... yes, I know there's a LOT of other good distros out there, but I've made my choice and I'm sticking with it. A system based on Debian, but easier to use? - perfection!
Still looks like an ugly cousin of Windows 95. If the Linux crowd want to be taken seriously they need interface designers who see where interfaces are heading and get there before MS or Apple. And then they need a great SDK and profit incentive for developers. Otherwise this is a waste of time and Linux should stick to servers.
"Linux nerds would no doubt argue that what Canonical does is nothing that can't be done on your own"
Oh, technically. I use gentoo and have a desktop that's pretty nice but it took A LOT of setting up and tweaking; I recommend Ubuntu for anyone else, although I have friends who use Gentoo, FreeBSD, and Debian. Seeing even Ubuntu and Debian side-by-side, they are similar but Ubuntu really does throw a lot of polish on there (note: Ubuntu is Debian-based).
@geronimo hashbucket, I haven't tried kubuntu (this is Ubuntu that uses KDE instead of Gnome) but on a "straight" distro like debian, KDE and Gnome are fairly different. I like the layout of gnome better out of the two but KDE seems flashier.
Regarding MP3 versus Ogg -- I'm not sure using Ogg would be the big problem Daniel B and No 3 have made it out to be -- Windows and mac users are used to plugins to play stuff, and most music players support Ogg. That said I'm a pragmatist, so I really don't care if they use MP3 either.
secondly, I ran the update manager today and I could no longer boot it afterwards.
I had to use another machine to search online for the problem, then type in four command lines at the BIOS stage (some lengthy) and then hope I could reboot. All of this was an act of faith.
Has anybody heard of change management/control? I like Linux, but you can't expect Joe Average to use it if a basic security update fucks the OS.
What to say? You run an *upgrade* with a *beta* on your *main system*? And then you scream about change management? Oh wait...is my calendar wrong? Is it 1st April?? Uh...no...
You obviously don't work in a production environment where the phrase "change management" has any real meaning, in fact I'd be surprised if you have any technical experience in an IT environment at all. If you do then I pity your end 1u$3Rz - because that's what they will be with you looking after their IT systems.
Free advice: next time you want to play with the latest OS (beta or release) swap your hard drive for an old one and install it on that or install Virtual Box on your live system and install it as a VM. Your next support call gets charged.
He doesn't mention he's running the latest beta. He doesn't mention he's running it on his production machine. He doesn't claim to work in a production environment and he doesn't claim to work in IT. In fact your comment is about as off the mark as it's possible to be.
What he does claim is that running an update on Ubuntu bricked his machine and I, for one, acknowledge this as do Cannonical themselves. Most people would agree that "human beings" shouldn't have to install their OS on a spare drive inside a virtual machine on a separate box because it can't be trusted.
Free advice: Next time you want to make a comment, word it in such a way that doesn't make you come across as a 17 year old idiot with no grip on reality. You're singlehandedly responsible for all of the Ian McNees around the world just having their CVs thrown in the bin.
Fixating on the MP3 store is just moronic. There simply isn't any need. The last thing anyone needs is yet another proprietary vertically integrated media store. Just make integrating with Amazon or any of the other non-DRM music stores better. Or even make dealing with physical ripping better.
There is no DMCA foolishness to slow down ripping physical disks. The need for a special store is no so much. This matters a lot more for video or books since those formats are hip deep in DRM. You need the propretary hooks and deals just to get at the stuff.
An Ubuntu Kindle app would make remarkably more sense, or an Ubuntu version of iTunes.
Jelliphiish: "i'm not very penguin experienced.. if i want to improve how the front end looks, what's the best thing a nonce can do to improve it and make it a look little more impressive? without having to go to any great lengths.."
I don't know why people keep talking about the way Linux looks out of the box because it is not really relevant. Just chose what you want. System settings allows you to change colours, themes, and icons, as well as things like mouse and keyboard behaviour.
You can also use some other windowing system. Personally, I usually install the server edition and then pick a windowing system of my choice - usually KDE. If you can type ONE simple request on the command line then that way if open to you too. Otherwise, just click on your package manager and go to town.
just because you dont like twitter, facebook and te rest of the social networking stuff some of you have stated you will be changing distro...
its a bit like buying a new car because you dont like the CD in the cd player....
there are quite a few bits of ubuntu that i dont like/dont use so the first thing i do is remove it.....
I believe the point of ubuntu including social networking apps is so that linux can become the OS for the masses... and as the masses use twitter and facebook etc
Windows has been so sucsessful over the years because it works out the box and has been easy to use. it included basic apps that people use every day.
The only way Ubuntu will become a mainstream OS (and i dont belive it will in the near or even distant future) is to make it work out the box on most computers and include a set of apps that the masses use/want...
mines the one with sudo apt-get remove evolution evolution-common evolution-couchdb evolution-exchange evolution-indicator evolution-plugins evolution-webcal f-spot gnome-games gnome-games-common rhythmbox tomboy on a piece of paper in the pocket....
Windows has been so sucsessful over the years because it works out the box and has been easy to use
No, it doesn't and no it isn't.
Windows is set up to work "out of the box" by the hardware manufacturers. If you install XP from an XP install disc, as opposed to a "system restore disc" you'll almost certainly find half your hardware doesn't work, you can't move windows without horrible graphics glitches and IE, Outlook and Notepad are poor offerings for those "everyday tasks".
And, as for "easy to use" - puleeze. It doesn't clear up after itself, it needs frequent defrags, cache emptyings, anti-virus scans, spyware scans and trojan scans. God help you if the hive becomes corrupted (game crashes can do this), or the registry gets messed up.
WIndows is the most badly designed piece of crap ever foisted on the paying public in the history of technology.
This is probably the most coherent argument I've ever read in the Windows v. Linux out of the box debate.
To take it a step further I had to install an OS on a PC for somebody recently. Like most consumers they'd chucked all the useful disks that came with the PC. Trying to install Windows was a non starter, it simply would not recognize the NIC. Without that I couldn't install any of the other drivers I needed. Luckilly I had a Ubuntu disk on me. It installed, and OK so it wasn't perfect, but at least the NIC worked straight out of the box so I could download everything else I needed.
It's an uncommon scenario in that I didn't have another PC available, but it happened and the user wanted to be up and running ASAP. They got Ubuntu and have been using it happilly for months. Amazing because they have been using Windows for years without being tech savvy, just the sort of person that the Linux detractors say will never take to Linux.
"Ubuntu founder March Shuttleworth has set Linux the target of beating Apple on the desktop in terms of features and polish. Has he delivered with his Lucid Lynx?"....
(Serious question) Is he putting money into Gnome development or some of the productivity/social apps you're talking off?
.....its just as far as I can tell most of the things you're bigging up (rightly or wrongly) don't seem to have much to do with him or Canonincal.
As to polish - there are much prettier desktops themes for the taking, would have been nice to see a little cash headed towards their creators instead of wasting money slightly re-inventing the deadful themes and art Canonical produces in-house.
...also why do we need another music store, really pointless effort that.
You love the ethos ? Are you sure you understand it ?
The ethos of Linux is that if you don't like it, you have the tools and the sources to fix it. If you don't have the inclination, the skills or the money to employ someone, that's your problem - you don't have any justification to complain about someone else's efforts.
I've been using Ubuntu since 8.10, now, having been driven to it by KDE 4.0, but I have to say that GNOME's continued war against features is having me wonder if KDE is now up to snuff. Removing the path-bar button is just spitefulness, and Evolution *still* to this very day has no way to configure it to return to the Inbox after deleting a message. It's the small things that really get me mad, not the overall polish (of which there's plenty). And Empathy is NO substitute for Pidgin. Empathy is a part of the war on features, alas, but I'm sure they'll keep Pidgin packaged for quite some time (I hope).
Do I go for a Windows OS with all its bloat and eye candy ?
Or do I go for Ubuntu with all its bloat and eye candy ?
And that really defines the marketplace for most "users" today. The core OS argument has never really been an issue for most "users", how shiny and sparkly the desktop is, whether it does what they want, has been the driving force, and mainly a PR battle between choosing "Linux" against the de-facto Windows first choice.
Both Windows and Ubuntu have far more bloat and eye candy than I need and will ever use but I can understand why and I'm not really in either of their target markets.
Linux core OS is undoubtedly better and Linux more suited to servers, but in the "user" arena it's about desktop and application, not what's hidden under the floor. Ubuntu isn't really about Linux OS, it's just a vehicle for using it, Linux is only a platform to build upon, so full marks to Ubuntu for steering the desktop and applications further towards what actual "users" want.
i hear some of you bleating on about ubuntu making linux users lazy and all that type of nonsense... What a load of elitist crap. Just because you want to make yourself look brainy in front of others you want to keep configuration in text files....
for instance, you want to enable the backports repos in your Linux distro... what options are their available..
yes, you can open a terminal box, open a text editor of choice (go on, ridicule my chioce of text editor) as root, ..... "sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list then uncomment the required line to enable the backports, save exit, issue the command" sudo apt-"get update" hey presto!,,,
or you can open up update manager, enter root pw. click on the sources tab, and click on the box for backports.... it automaticly refreshes... job done....
ok, i admit, the less technical person may enable backports and proposed repos without even knowing what they are doing then complaining when instabilities are present....
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