Renzatic on 26/8/2009 at 18:39
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
I'm kinda asking the same question.
I'm still asking that question. I've still got Ubuntu up in the virtual machine, and after following some of Jay's advice, it's turning out to be a decent OS. Decent being the key word here. I'm not tickled pink over it quite yet, all willing to sign over the house deed to the FOSS community so all those starving programmers can have a place to stay. I only find it to be a just-as-good, no better no worse, Windows replacement for computer savvy people wanting something different and are willing to give up access to some nice 3rd party apps.
It's fun to play with, sure. Once I have the thing installed on a proper partition and get some convenient UI enhancements up, I'll probably like it that much more. But still, I see it more as a good netbook OS than a primary. For me anyway.
Quote:
I installed Ubuntu to a 8Gb Flash Drive to play around with it a bit more seriously than with the live CD, got it to play DVD's ok, and then haven't touched it since.
How does it run going through a USB drive? I can imagine it takes a little while longer to boot up, but is it pretty smooth once you're on the desktop? I've got a ton of flash drives lying around, It'd be easier to slap Ubuntu on there than popping my case open and installing another harddrive.
Swedishman on 26/8/2009 at 19:48
I consider myself an advanced ordinary computer-user and I installed Ubuntu on one of my two computers about nine months ago. Some things I like about it and some things I don't like about it.
I like:
1) Virtual desktops!!! If there is one reason I almost can't use Windows now it is because of this. Instead of having one desktop where you have all you applications open (like in windows) you can have different applications open on different desktops and then you just switch between desktops. I find this really help me with my overview of what I have open and what I work with. I really don't get why this isn't in Windows. When I go to windows and have four or more programs open at the same time it just seem so cluttered. Maybe something in the Windows-code make it hard to implement, but I don't see what that should be.
2)Add/Remove-programs (and Synaptic). This makes it so simple to install programs it is ridiculous. Just click on the program you want, click install, enter your password and that's it (as long as you got an internet connection that is). It is also a good way to get a good overview of the programs that you can install and the ranking system makes it easy for a new-comer to spot the most essential programs. I have really got stuck in some software in may later years as a Windows-user, but now with Add/Remove in Ubuntu I have discovered some new programs. In Windows you have to go to Google (at least I did) and search for what you kind of want and hope you will find something that you don't have to pay money for. If you have good patience, that works really well, I haven't really got it.
Synaptic is also great. Not as beginner-user-friendly as Add/Remove, but if something mystical thing is missing it will probably be found in Synaptic.
3) Password to access all important system files. Sure, viruses can still be created for Ubuntu(and Linux), but this is one more barrier for viruses.
4) I like the way the standard desktop enviroment is organized in Ubuntu. This is more a matter of taste then anything else though. And I only compare it to Windows XP which is what I use on my other computer.
5) Easy installation process. I really don't like messing around to much with partitions, but here I felt quite calm and relaxed through the whole process.
What I dont like:
1) When I did start to use Ubuntu my wireless network card refused to work. As I couldn't connect to internet through a cable either (why the cable didn't work I don't know, it do work now though) I had to use another computer to get hold of an quite complicated solution which involved changing things in system files. Not a very good start for Ubuntu. The makes of the network card hadn't included any support for Ubuntu (or any Linuxdistro) and this is generally a problem for Ubuntu and Linux. Why should hardware developers care about such a small market share as Ubuntu-useres? This will change though when more and more people start to use Ubuntu and Linux, which I hope will happen. And I think the Ubuntu-developers has put in some code that will make my network-card work right away if I did an new clean install.
2) When a new version of Ubuntu comes out all the packages (OpenOffice, Firefox and all other applications) also is updated to the latest tested version automatically. But since new Ubuntu-releases only comes along every six months you really want to update some programs in between also. But this is that easy, at least I haven't found it easy. You can't do it through the program i question (you can't for exemple update Firefox from Firefox preferences). So I'm stuck with Firefox 3.0.13 until the next version of Ubuntu is released. Well, not really true, I could download the new Firefox-version from Ubuntus homepage and install it, problem is, it is installed with is experimental name along-side 3.0.13 and it doesn't import any of the settings, bookmarks of extensions I have set for my current Firefox. I could move my firefox-profilefolder, but I dont have the energy to do it now.
There are also other ways I think to get it to update, but compared to how updates/upgrades of programs is done in Windows it really is quite a pain for me.
What I'm doubtful of.
1) I don't play much games these days and so I haven't tested WINE (which for at least some people), but I do believe it can be quite a hell to get games to run and run without lagging. Of course there are Open source games to download, but from what I have seen they are quite some way of the newer commercial games.
Bottom line
I like Ubuntu very much. I hope a few more people start to use Ubuntu because the hardware-developers will have to start to adjust their products for Ubuntu/Linux. I now use Ubuntu as my primary operating system.
With that said, I still have my good old XP on my other computer and have no plans to remove it. I still use it sometimes to play a few old games on it and, more importantly, it is good to have an backup for Ubuntu. Sometimes small things gets messed up in Ubuntu, and while this isn't necessaryly Ubuntu-developers fault (hardware-developers, maybe a webpage is demanding you to use some kind of only Windowsproduct like Silverlight), it is nice to now you can turn to windows and find a working solution there. Mess-ups is more and more rare for me though and hopefully it is an continuing trend.
jay pettitt on 1/9/2009 at 12:05
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
Oh, and Dethtoll, that is SO true! When I first installed Ubuntu, I tried installing the graphics drivers from a bash shell, and it uninstalled XWindows :(
You didn't tick the 'use hardware drivers for my graphics card' option from the Hardware-Drivers menu then?
Brian The Dog on 1/9/2009 at 16:07
No, I thought I would download the official Linux drivers from the NVidia website and follow their installation instructions. That'll teach me :) In subsequent Ubuntu installations I did what you suggested.
heywood on 1/9/2009 at 16:53
Quote Posted by Swedishman
I like:
1) Virtual desktops!!! If there is one reason I almost can't use Windows now it is because of this.
You can do that in Windows using the Virtual Desktop Manager tool from Microsoft. Just download the Windows XP PowerToys:
(
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Quote:
What I dont like:
1) When I did start to use Ubuntu my wireless network card refused to work. As I couldn't connect to internet through a cable either (why the cable didn't work I don't know, it do work now though) I had to use another computer to get hold of an quite complicated solution which involved changing things in system files. Not a very good start for Ubuntu. The makes of the network card hadn't included any support for Ubuntu (or any Linuxdistro) and this is generally a problem for Ubuntu and Linux. Why should hardware developers care about such a small market share as Ubuntu-useres? This will change though when more and more people start to use Ubuntu and Linux, which I hope will happen. And I think the Ubuntu-developers has put in some code that will make my network-card work right away if I did an new clean install.
Related to that:
One of the things I find most frustrating about Linux is that most of the networking tools were developed by people who assumed the network configuration would be static. So support for roaming wireless users is kludgy, especially for things like ad-hoc networks.
It reminds me of the way Linux developers approached Plug-and-Play in the beginning. They basically scoffed at it and ridiculed it until realizing that the rest of the computing world had moved on and they better get with the program.
mudi on 1/9/2009 at 17:20
Really? Dynamic networks have been easy since network-manager caught on.
Renzatic on 1/9/2009 at 19:10
What's the big deal with virtual desktops anyway? I never found a use for Spaces in OSX, and I doubt I'd ever use the same feature in Linux. To me, it makes more sense to organize everything so it's easily accessible from a single screen than it is to have multiple desktops set up for specific functions.
The only way it'd make sense is if you have hundreds of programs that you have to juggle and all of them won't fit onto your dock or desktop without getting too crowded. But even then, you always have access to some form of stacks that allows you to sort everything into specific groups for quick access. It just seems more a fluff feature than anything.
heywood on 1/9/2009 at 20:58
Quote Posted by mudi
Really? Dynamic networks have been easy since network-manager caught on.
Network Manager had a lot of problems when I tried it.
First, if you set up a network connection when you installed Ubuntu, the interface won't be available to Network Manager. That was no biggie by itself, but it's a symptom of a larger problem. Network Manager isn't aware of any static network configuration, so if you want to switch between a wired and wireless connection, you need to remove your static configuration and let Network Manager configure them both. That was a problem because I was using static IP, gateway, and DNS server addresses for my wired connection and DHCP for wireless, and Network Manager wasn't smart enough to maintain those settings per interface.
Another huge problem was that Network Manager doesn't allow you to specify network preference, and in Roaming mode it will connect to any open network it finds. So if you're around an open network you'll find yourself connecting to that usually by default. Which is really a pain if you have a weak connection to an encrypted network, because every time you lose connection even momentarily, Network Manager will switch you over to the open network instead of trying to re-connect to the encrypted network you want to be on. And good luck connecting to a network that isn't broadcasting its SSID or an ad-hoc network - I had no luck with either.
Finally, I had a wireless card in my desktop PC that required some additional configuration options for WPA_supplicant, and Network Manager didn't allow for that.
I've heard that wicd solves most of the problems with Network Manager, but I haven't tried it. I ended up going back to Slackware on my desktop PC and configuring networking through scripts and config files. On my laptop, I just stopped using Linux. I had power management issues on the laptop that were driving me crazy too and sluggish performing media codecs.
Quote Posted by Renzatic
What's the big deal with virtual desktops anyway? I never found a use for Spaces in OSX, and I doubt I'd ever use the same feature in Linux. To me, it makes more sense to organize everything so it's easily accessible from a single screen than it is to have multiple desktops set up for specific functions.
The only way it'd make sense is if you have hundreds of programs that you have to juggle and all of them won't fit onto your dock or desktop without getting too crowded. But even then, you always have access to some form of stacks that allows you to sort everything into specific groups for quick access. It just seems more a fluff feature than anything.
Stacks are a file/folder/app organizing tool, not a window organizing tool. They're different things.
I find that once you have more than a dozen or so windows to work with, the flat organizational structure of the Windows taskbar or OS X Dock becomes unwieldy and having another level in the hierarchy makes things more manageable.
Also, virtual desktops are great for organizing windows task-wise. A lot of my tasks involve multiple windows from multiple applications, so ordinary window switching or application switching just doesn't cut it. I like to be able to just hit one keystroke and have all the windows related to that one task be right where I left them.
Chade on 1/9/2009 at 21:38
Quote Posted by Renzatic
What's the big deal with virtual desktops anyway?
Virtual desktops are good if you could organise your windows into groups such that you regularly switch between the windows withing a group, bit rarely switch between groups.
But I must admit that this situation doesn't come up anywhere near as much as I thought it would, and I rarely use my virtual desktops. I doubt I'll ever use them now that I have dual monitors.
