Hey Ubuntu, Stop Making Linux Look Bad

[Madoness]

Okay, so here is an article that I can relate to. Sometimes, it crashes out of nowhere, while doing practically nothing. At times when booting up in hangs on black screen. There has been some graphical problems, ending up with crashing. Both, Firefox and Opera do crash at times. Java is not working quite as it is supposed to on Opera. Though I could be considered as noob using linux, using Ubuntu 9.04, I witnessed no such problem.


The new Ubuntu 9.10

Ubuntu’s new Karmic Koala 9.10 release has been highly anticipated as the greatest release ever. In truth, it falls flat on its face in a time when Linux really needed to shine.

Christopher Smart
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009



It’s the same old story. A new Ubuntu release, a new series of pain and frustration.

Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu every 6 months, come what may. Unfortunately what most often comes is a system full of bugs, pain, anguish, wailing and gnashing of teeth - as many “early” adopters of Karmic Koala have discovered.

The problem is, Ubuntu makes Linux look bad. As more and more people make the switch to free software this is not a good thing. Linux is meant to be stable, secure, reliable.

On the other hand, Ubuntu is obviously doing a lot right. People are indeed switching to Linux, and most of these users have come from an operating system far more torturous, but what they arrive to doesn’t have to be the way it is. Indeed, it shouldn’t be that way.

You see, “With great power comes great responsibility” and now that Ubuntu is very popular it really has a responsibility to create quality products.

As usual, some things which were broken in the previous release are now fixed, but things which were working are now broken. A friend of mine has two wireless USB devices. One works on 9.04 while the other one doesn’t, which is fair enough. With 9.10 however, the one which wasn’t working now works, but the one which was working now doesn’t. Come again? It’s not the first time either. Upgrading from 8.10 to 9.04 his TV tuner cards which used to work, then stopped.

There’s gotta be a better way to do this.

With each new release comes new features, newer software, yet somehow things go backwards. Free software is supposed to improve with each new release. Take OS X, which gets faster. Cleaner. Better. Sure, they have a much smaller hardware base to work on, but it can be done. Ubuntu with the potential for thousands of developers surely can do a better job? Or at least, surely it could at least move forward??

Perhaps Ubuntu’s success is also its curse. They came to fame by making the hard things easier and as such have done great things for the Linux desktop. When you introduce components like proprietary software however, things get more complicated. Sure, Jockey (the proprietary driver manager) warns that Ubuntu “cannot improve or fix these third party drivers,” but does the average user really know what that means? All they know is that their entire (supposedly stable) Linux box hard locks each time they log out or switch users.

Personally, upgrading a recent Jaunty install to Karmic entirely broke networking on the box. Meanwhile, a fresh Kubuntu 32bit install wouldn’t boot with a broken GRUB2 configuration and booting to the Live CD then hard locked the machine. On another machine, half-way through a fresh Ubuntu 64 bit install, the video card suddenly started to display artefacts on the screen. A power off and reboot and it’s still broken. Coincidence? Maybe.

Other people experience awesome features like broken graphics, crashing installer, misconfigured boot loader, USB drives not mounting, sound not working, broken wireless, the list goes on. Upgrading is so bad that a majority of the advice is to perform a fresh install. In fact, the entire term “early adopter” refers to the fact that most experienced Ubuntu users upgrading to the latest version will always wait at least a month before doing so, in order to ensure most major bugs are fixed. Is this seriously acceptable? Is this what you expect from a Linux system? Surely this is some kind of morbid, ironic joke.

Ubuntu is starting to make dents in the commercial arena and that’s great, but do we really need fancy new features like Ubuntu One when basic functionality (that quite frankly should be solved in the 21st century) doesn’t work as expected? Isn’t Ubuntu supposed to “Just Work”™?

Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the release notes for 9.10 and read the 40 odd bugs for this “stable” operating system:

* Boot from degraded RAID array broken
* File system corruption with so called “large files” over 512MB
* Hibernation unavailable with automatic partitioning
* Kubuntu package manager does not warn about installing from unsigned package repositories
* No USB devices work on MSI Wind netbooks, plus flickering graphics
* No Xv support for Intel graphics
* Samba nmbd daemon not started during boot
* System won’t boot with converted ext4 file system
* Ubuntu Netbook Remix missing shutdown applet
* Ubuntu One client corrupts data
* Wireless kill switch segfaults kernel
* X server crashes when using a Wacom tablet
* ..and others (plus more discovered after release).

You must be joking.

A poll on the Ubuntu forums shows just 10% of people had a flawless install. Now that’s something to be proud of! Still not convinced? Try it yourself.

They say, “What goes around comes around.” If Ubuntu doesn’t get their act together then they will be eclipsed by other distros, and rightfully so. What’s worse about all this, is that Karmic Koala had been talked up so much. “It’s a Windows 7 killer” and all that, which of course we’ve heard before. Shuttleworth boasts that he is even “looking forward” to the battle with Microsoft. In the face of Microsoft’s latest effort, just when Linux needed a knight in shining armor and a prime example of how amazing free software is we get, ah, Ubuntu. Hurrah.

Many years ago Linux was very command line focused (and still can be, thank goodness). Back then, many Windows users tried Linux and were scared off, never to try Linux again having been so deeply scarred by that initial experience. It’s happening again, except that this time many of the things which are great about Linux that are touted by the community are being destroyed. Linux is stable, it doesn’t crash. Whoops, Ubuntu just hard locked my machine. Whoops, Firefox is no longer starting up for some reason, whoops this package is now broken. Gah!

Canonical is not an open source company, they are just using free software to try and get a slice of the huge operating system market. Even so, one of Shuttleworth’s primary goals for Ubuntu is for it to be as good as OS X. With releases like Karmic Koala, they aren’t going to get there any time soon, especially when Apple is releasing excellent bug fix-only versions like Snow Leopard. Get your act together, because while Ubuntu might be gaining brave new users who have it worse on Windows, it just doesn’t cut it for experienced Linux users.

Of course these sort of issues are not limited to Ubuntu, but it certainly seems to have more than its fair share. Perhaps it’s the whole commercially driven “release on time” philosophy, or maybe there aren’t enough beta testers. Then again, Fedora has been pushing the limits more than Ubuntu recently and has introduced far more features, yet has had much more successful releases. Something is very wrong with Ubuntu’s release cycle.

Perhaps it’s just Karma, or perhaps the mascot too greatly epitomizes this release. Koalas are after all, very lazy beasts who sleep most of the time (and they don’t drink at all). Drop bears on the other hand..

 

[Ogion]

Yea well.. Ubuntu is the Linux Distro that is most actively trying to be 'like' Windows. Well, not officially, but they want users and especially converts from Windows, so they make everything 'userfriendly' and bloaty and so on. Thedistro they are basing on, Debian GNU/Linux, is a really reliable Serverdistro, but Ubuntu manages to make the worst of it.

Just as a mention: There are a lot of interesting Distros out there, and not just for the Linuxnerd. This is a nice Distro chooser, for someone who is willing to go a little distrohopping (trying out different distros). It gives some hints which distro might be interesting for you, given your answers to a few questions.

Ogion

 

[fullerene]

First: I hate the way this article is written. Ubuntu is free, so I don't feel like they have any responsibility to anyone. It's nice that they do what they do, and this article is more biased than the news. Ok, not "more", but at least "equally". It's trying to tell you what to think rather than giving information and letting you decide for yourself.


That said, Karmic sucks. Everything on my laptop worked perfectly fine in Jaunty. I switched to Karmic, and the sound no longer works (it's either on full blast, or, once it gets turned down using padevchooser far enough, it's muted). It's possible to change the volume, again using padevchooser, but the "main" volume doesn't do it--it has to be changed for each specific application. That means that the volume buttons on the computer don't work either... I have to open it up and change it manually. Using the mouse. Every time something that wants to use sound opens up (because it resets to 100% when, say, mplayer finishes a song and closes).

Likewise, the sleep/suspend/whatever you call it function is broken. After turning on my computer, I can sleep it once and turn it back on without trouble, but the second time it freezes, always. It doesn't matter whether I'm using gnome or fluxbox. Finally, shutting it down (sometimes) makes it freeze too. I haven't figured out a pattern to that yet, though. When I say "freeze", I actually mean "makes big gray, flashing patterns on my screen for no apparent reason" until I power it off manually and then turn it back on again.

Is there any easy way for me to just "reset" to Jaunty again?

I agree these things are a pain in the ass, but I'm still disgusted by how opinionated and bitchy that article was.

 

[walfin]

Enlightening. So Kubuntu's crashes aren't exactly the result of anti-KDE discrimination.

Come to think of it, I loved Edgy. Feisty and Gutsy didn't do much as far as I could see and things just went downhill from then on.

 

[Madoness]

Yea well.. Ubuntu is the Linux Distro that is most actively trying to be 'like' Windows. Well, not officially, but they want users and especially converts from Windows, so they make everything 'userfriendly' and bloaty and so on. Thedistro they are basing on, Debian GNU/Linux, is a really reliable Serverdistro, but Ubuntu manages to make the worst of it.

Just as a mention: There are a lot of interesting Distros out there, and not just for the Linuxnerd. This is a nice Distro chooser, for someone who is willing to go a little distrohopping (trying out different distros). It gives some hints which distro might be interesting for you, given your answers to a few questions.

Ogion

It does not give any hints if results are the same (100%) for OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Debian, Linux Mint and Fedora. (though I can cast out a three of them I've tried in the past). So I'm using Ubuntu now, have used Mandriva, Linux Mint and Fedora in the past, so... openSUSE and Debian to try out.

cryptonia, I guess the writer was not trying to be bitchy about, but was saying, the new distro is right now a bit unstable in his way. It is not as if he has lied.

 

[fullerene]

It's not lying.... it's just very aggressively opinionated writing. Maybe I just hate persuasive stuff, but I'd rather form my own opinions. The fact to opinion ratio of that was very low--unless you count the opinions which he stated as facts ("Ubuntu now has a responsibility to be good, since it's popular" and things like that). It just rubbed me the wrong way, despite all my problems with the OS at the moment.

 

[Ogion]

@Crypt True, the article is a rant. Someone was pissed off there :P There should be some results when you search for "ubuntu downgrade", in theory it is easy, just replace "karmic" with "jaunty" (or whatever the verison was) and do a dist-upgrade, *but* i have never done that so do not follow my advice here

@Madoness: Ah ok, never had that result. I would def. not recommend Suse though (It might lure you in with yast, that system configuration tool that does everything, but once you get into slight problems that you in other distros could solve by a little bit of config editing, yast pwns you, because it just overrides your config files and does other horrible things to children, wait, what? No but seriously, yast is quite annoying).

Ogion

 

[Madoness]

His apology and/or explanation.

Spoiler

My last (admittedly strongly worded) article appears to have touched quite a nerve out there in the community.

Perhaps some readers jumped the gun when they saw the title and didn’t read the whole article, or perhaps I didn’t make my point clear. Either way, I’ve decided to clarify my perspective a little (if anyone bothers to come back to read it), because I actually do care about Linux.

Clarifications

The first thing I want to clarify is that I’m not saying Ubuntu is a bad operating system, or even a bad Linux distribution. For ease of use for new users it remains one of the best choices available. I’m also not even saying that Karmic is a particularly worse release than any other. I’m also not saying that Windows is good, nor that OS X is perfect. The reason I referred to OS X is because that’s Shuttleworth’s goal for Ubuntu - to surpass it.

I’m a Linux guy. For me, of course Linux is the best operating system ever there was. I want it to be even better.

As I mentioned in my article, Ubuntu has done (and continues to do) a lot of good for Linux. They have made many of the previously hard tasks much simpler. As a result, they have also converted new users like no other distro before them.

What I am saying however is that, in general, a new version of Ubuntu is simply not stable enough at the time of release. I’m not particularly complaining about everything else Ubuntu does, just primarily that the releases are not solid enough. Many people know this, which is self evident by the number of major issues people are having, the bugs in the release notes, and the fact that it’s common practice to not upgrade for a month. This is not a good thing, especially for new users.

This is what the article was about - issues with a new release, primarily the upgrade experience failing or causing issues. Shouldn’t we make Linux the best it possibly can be?

The Cause

Ubuntu Community Manager, Jono Bacon, recently wrote on his blog in relation to this issue:

“Karmic was a ballsy release: we shipped some adventurous new technology and in the short six-month cycle that we are committed to, we tried to ship the most exciting, feature-full and compelling release that we could.”

Non-LTS versions of Ubuntu are more bleeding edge, we all know that. Even so, they are still meant to be stable releases. It’s a fine line between stability and features, I understand that. It’s a hard thing to judge and get right. Add to all that a strict timeline and commercial pressure and you might get a less than desirable result. Can we have an exciting, feature-full and compelling release that is also highly stable?

At the end of the day, Ubuntu (and Linux in general) gets judged by what is put out there. If a release does have some major bugs, the perception among the community will reflect that.

Jono also said:

“I don’t want to denigrate the experiences of our users who face problems: if something goes wrong, that user’s experience is genuinely marred. Irrespective of whether the fault was in our package, with hardware, with networking, in the upstream version of the software or elsewhere, that user had a bad experience, and we need to come together as a project to help prevent these problems from occurring again.”

Exactly. He’s spot on.

A few days ago, a proposal was put forward to increase community involvement in testing Ubuntu before it’s released. A post on their blog reads:

“We cannot leave quality to good luck. We cannot rely in having millions of users who will find bugs as they use the applications. Our users want to use the software, not to find bugs and report them. FOSS projects in general and Ubuntu in particular need a new way of rethinking testing as a skilled activity and an opportunity to contribute to the project.”

Once again, this is dead right. With Lucid 10.04 being a LTS (Long Term Support) release, naturally it will not be pushing the envelope as much in terms of new features. It will also be much more thoroughly tested with an earlier freeze.

The Downside

Of course, there will always be bugs. The fact is that Karmic has caused a lot of problems and broken many peoples’ machines. The question remains, is that a good thing? Is it acceptable? I don’t think anyone can honestly believe that it is.

I know that there are a lot of excuses; “It’s free software,” “Canonical is a small company,” “There’s too much hardware out there,” etc. I get that. The bottom line however, is that it’s a reality which we need to deal with and tackle. Relying on these excuses is not going to cut it long term, especially as Ubuntu becomes more and more popular.

As I’ve said many, many times, I’m not so concerned about the technical people out there who come across an issue and workaround or solve it. What does concern me is the average user who has finally taken the plunge from Windows. They need the best experience possible and an upgrade which breaks their machine is the exact opposite of that. End users don’t care that it’s free. End users don’t care about any of the excuses we currently make, they just want things to work.

Sure, over time each release gets better as more bugs are found and fixed, and that’s exactly the point. It takes time after the final version is out. Updating to Karmic today, is much better than it was two weeks ago. Currently however, the update manager prompts users to upgrade right at the time of release before many major problems are resolved, and that’s just a bit too risky.

If Ubuntu is going to throw in lots of extra changes to a release and are expecting things to be dodgy, perhaps they should communicate this more clearly. The oft recommended solution is to only use a LTS release of Ubuntu. These releases are usually more thoroughly tested (which is to say that non-LTS releases are less tested), which is good.

Unfortunately however, LTS releases are not really a great option for the desktop because they end up being so old. For example, current LTS users only have OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 because Ubuntu doesn’t update packages within a release unless there’s a security or bug issue. So LTS might offer a more stable system, but it’s not ideal.

Sure, there’s PPAs and backports and all that, but that’s not a solution to this problem. Firstly, average Joe is not going to know how to set that up (it’s meant to be easy, remember?) and secondly this can introduce more conflicts with less stable software which could mean a worse user experience.

Does Ubuntu even recommend for end users to use LTS releases? Nope. In fact, the webpage defaults to downloading the latest release, not the LTS. Furthermore, the option for LTS (which is hidden) says it’s “ideal for large deployments.” Does that sound like an average Joe home user to you?

Two Simple Suggestions

If a new release of Ubuntu improves dramatically in the first little while following a release, then naturally those updating at this later point in time would have a better experience.

So if we have non-technical users who need a system which is as reliable as possible, they could get a better experience by updating at some later point after a release. Is there a way to achieve that?

Last week on my personal blog (yes, you can leave hate mail there too), I made two simple suggestions which might help overcome (or at least alleviate) these problems.

The first is for the update manager to not prompt the user to upgrade until the stable release has been out for a month (or whatever time frame works. It could even be dynamically flagged when ready).

The problem as I see it, is that the average user gets notified and upgrades straight away. Problems occur and they’re stuck. Ubuntu (and Linux in general) looks bad.

Simply delaying this a month or two means they are blissfully unaware of the newer version until all the major issues are resolved. They will still continue to receive updates on the previous version. Then when they do upgrade, they should have a much more trouble-free experience. Advanced users would still upgrade straight away, discover problems and get them fixed. This won’t solve issues with a fresh install, but many bugs seem to come from upgrading an older version.

Secondly, it seems to me that many of the problems faced with a new version of Ubuntu are due to the fact that it’s a time based release. Come hell or high water, it’s released in that scheduled month. The problem with this is that there’s no room to slip the release, especially when its due date is already at the end of the month.

So my other suggestion is simply to schedule the release for the 1st day of the month. If all is well, release it. If there are major bugs that need fixing, then you’ve got 4 weeks to slip the release and still make that month.

Missing The Point

Ubuntu improves over time once bugs are found and fixed. That’s how free software works. The problem is that the final release is shipped with too many bugs (for whatever reason), which means there are often all sorts of issues, especially with the upgrade process.

Of course it’s hard to find these bugs without a massive user base testing the release. That is supposed to happen with beta and release candidates, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. Most people will upgrade when it’s “stable,” not when it’s officially still in testing.

A month or so after a new release, the upgrade process in Ubuntu is much more smooth. Major bugs have been found and fixed. Known bugs have often also been resolved. How can we make the end user experience better for average Joe? After all, don’t we all want Linux to be the best it can be? Don’t we want user experiences to be as positive as possible?

If we can’t get more testing done before the release, and if bugs are going to be fixed afterwards, then there seems only one simple solution - delay the update option for end users by default.

What I care about is Linux looking good for the average user, that’s the bottom line. For technical users who are happy to fix problems, it doesn’t really matter. I work around the problems I run into with Ubuntu, but I have a lot of friends and colleagues who I have helped put onto Ubuntu whose machines often break every time there’s a new release. This means all the things I say about Linux being stable and not doing “weird things like Windows,” etc, make me out to be a liar and make Linux look bad.

On one hand you want Linux to have lots of new features and push the envelope, but on the other hand it needs to be rock solid. I understand that this is hard to achieve.

It’s hard to be stable when you’re always pushing the envelope, and it’s even harder when you do it on a short time-line. Ubuntu should keep doing what they’re doing but as it becomes more popular some things will need to change. If a stable release is going to have lots of issues (for whatever reason), then delaying the prompt to update seems like a simple and reasonable option (even though I’m not saying it’s the right answer).

We all want Linux to excel, but above all we need new users (especially those less technical) to have a really smooth and seamless user experience. Hopefully the Ubuntu community can achieve that.

 

[Zero]

I like all my computers, but considering that SO Much is compatible with Windows, I tend to use my windows computer more. The games and such I wanted to play on it were the main thing (esp. MMOs).

Recent, convenient technologies are more convenient when they're compatible...

I have the Ubuntu 9.10 on my Dvork laptop and my mini still has Jaunty. Both of them seem to work fine. I probably won't update my smaller laptop, because the hardware is rather picky.

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

I agree with this guy.

Also, my Karmic upgrade was initially fraught with much fail.

 

[Madoness]

OK, my laptop seems to have a bit more stability now, though I've had some problems... as ubuntu finding out partition errors and correcting them, however xp had another view, the same exact errors ubuntu found to be corrected, chkdsk on xp had to correct them their ways.
After some updates, most issues are gone, though now, after the last update.... when booting up, there is a screen telling me that it cannot find the graphics card so it has to start up having low-graphics (I hope it got corrected, however I haven't checked yet). When logged in, all works fine, though I don't want that screen telling me something what doesn't matter on boot up.

My guess is, why some are having no problems at all but I do, is that just for a fun, I installed 64 bit version, not the i386 one. Most errors seem to be because of that. But I'm too lazy to install clean 32 bit version to correct the mistake.... It'll take too much time, that is, to get the desktop and settings the way I like them, programs, browser bookmarks, saved passwords, etc.

Though, again... I didn't have any of these problems before the upgrade to 9.10, and I kind of start to like it.

Ogion, I agree... on the compiz matter. I do not like myself how long it takes for a browsers, folders to get open or when they are moved,these effects do tend to take too much time to stop. I'd like them to open quickly (by default they did anyhow), but these effects are enabled on my computer just to test. Vista was slow as f#¤k on my three year on laptop with (minimal!) aero effects. Ubuntu seems to be working just fine with these on, these effect are on just to test things that Vista couldn't do. I was never a fan of it (Vista) anyhow.

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

I've turned the time delay on all the Compiz effects I use down to nothing or almost nothing. You can do that FYI.

 

[NoID10ts]

Does anyone know anything about "Edubuntu"? I have 20 computers at work that were donated from a college. I don't have the login info for the college's image and no one seems to be able to obtain it so they need to be wiped clean. I don't have copies of XP to put on them and my school district won't image them because they are not "approved" machines. Right now, they're just sitting in a closet, useless.

I was thinking of putting Edubuntu on all of them for classroom use. I already installed Ubuntu 9.10 on one of them, but I want the educational software that's available. I'm also open to other suggestions.

Is there a good place to download software for Linux machines? I've only dabbled with Linux a bit in the past so it's pretty foreign to me. BTW, It's a middle school so we are talking 12-15 year olds as the primary users.

EDIT: Sorry if this is a bit off topic, I just saw "Ubuntu" and thought about asking about it.

 

[fullerene]

I don't know much about edubuntu, but my guess is it's a lot like ubuntu, just with software pre-intalled that's geared towards kids learning on it.

Software is very easy to install on ubuntu--easier than on windows, by far. You just have to google a bit to find a program that does whatever you want it to do, then go to a terminal and type "sudo apt-get install [program name]", and it does everything for you. Occasionally you might come across some obscure program that you have to install from source, which can be a pain, but for 95% of anything I've ever wanted, the easy way worked just fine.

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

I have not used Edubuntu myself, but cryptonia's first paragraph is accurate from what I've read.

Software install is supposed to be even easier than that - using Ubuntu Software Manager, theoretically you wouldn't even need to use the command-line. Ha. Hahahaha.

 

[asdfasdfasdfsdf]

so im kinda new to linux.. a little bit. i have been using standard ubuntu on my eeepc for a good year now, i took a linux class, so i know a little bit of bash scripting, and typical comands (ls and such) but im no where near good enough to actually write any drivers, and i wouldnt have the confidence to mess with system files...
so.. with that said, im looking for a new distro to use, i took that compatability test, and it said fedora, mandriva or opensuse (it also said kubuntu, but im not gonna use it)...
so, with that all said, what version do you think i should use?
also- what is scripting (but not expert skill) skill good for if im not writing drivers/interface programs and such?

 

[fullerene]

I like scripting for little jobs that would take a lot of time otherwise. For instance, at one point I wanted to convert all my .wma files into .mp3s, then rename them. Instead of sifting through folder after folder and "mv [filename].wma [filename].mp3" and then whatever the "convert to .mp3" program was (I forget now) on each folder, I just wrote a script to do it for me.

Keeping with the music theme, I have a script to random/play all any songs held within the folder (or sub-folders of that folder) you're currently in. It's short, but looks like...

#!/bin/bash

find ./ -name "*" -print > NoFileShouldEverHaveThisName.txt
mplayer -playlist NoFileShouldEverHaveThisName.txt -shuffle
rm NoFileShouldEverHaveThisName.txt

My music is grouped by "music", then folders for artists, then folders for albums.... so to shuffle an album, I just type "random" (is what my script is named, stuck in the /usr/local/bin folder) inside the album folder. To shuffle an artist, back up one step and type it there. To random play all, back up another level and type it there.

Scripting is also nice if you have programs that don't work well with each other. Running NES emulators, for instance, does not gel with compiz effects. The screen flashes, sound glitches, and it's otherwise a complete mess. So whenever you want to run your emulator, you can just write a script that turns off compiz, runs the emulator, then turns compiz back on after it completes.

Little conveniences like that.

 

[Ogion]

Sniktawekim: Out of the ones listed i'd probably say Fedora. Though i haven't used it myself much. (I'm using Arch now, though that one is a bit more experienced).
Don't take that test i linked (That distribution chooser) too seriously, it is just meant as a hint.
If you have some time and a way to test out different distros (like in a Virtaul MAchine or on a separate harddrive) then i'd say go a bit distro hopping. Menaing install a efw and see wether you like them. If you're happy with Ubuntu however do not feel forced to swithc just because some users dislike it. Always remember, software should serve you. Whatever works for you and feels comfortable (if you are looking for that, you might be looking for exciting or so then choose accordingly) then by all means use it, don't let yourself be talked out of it just because others don't find it according to their needs.

You can also play a little with the answers of that test (like the question over package management, deb, rpm, others) and see a few mroe results and then just go to the webpages of the distris and look for their philosophy, their goals and rules/guidelines and see what you find sympathetic.

Ogion

 

[asdfasdfasdfsdf]

Sniktawekim: Out of the ones listed i'd probably say Fedora. Though i haven't used it myself much. (I'm using Arch now, though that one is a bit more experienced).
Don't take that test i linked (That distribution chooser) too seriously, it is just meant as a hint.
If you have some time and a way to test out different distros (like in a Virtaul MAchine or on a separate harddrive) then i'd say go a bit distro hopping. Menaing install a efw and see wether you like them. If you're happy with Ubuntu however do not feel forced to swithc just because some users dislike it. Always remember, software should serve you. Whatever works for you and feels comfortable (if you are looking for that, you might be looking for exciting or so then choose accordingly) then by all means use it, don't let yourself be talked out of it just because others don't find it according to their needs.

You can also play a little with the answers of that test (like the question over package management, deb, rpm, others) and see a few mroe results and then just go to the webpages of the distris and look for their philosophy, their goals and rules/guidelines and see what you find sympathetic.

Ogion

thank you for the advice, im not leaving ubuntu because i dont like it, but more because its just blah.
firefox crashes all the time, it freezes rather commonly, it often has issues with the sound and flash, it cant detect my webcam drivers.. and ugh, the list goes on, so i pretty much stopped using it altogether, which is a shame, because there are moments when i really enjoy using linux. i was thinking about going fedora, mindriva seemed a little to "let me hold your hand" (like xandros).

the only problem is installing these on my eeepc because i dont have an external cd drive.

 

[Ogion]

Most distros nowadays should come with a Guide to use a USB stick as install medium. It should be fairly easy as well. (As long as you have a usb stick that can be formatted).

Ogion

 

[Cybernetist]

Does anyone know anything about "Edubuntu"? I have 20 computers at work that were donated from a college. I don't have the login info for the college's image and no one seems to be able to obtain it

BackTrack4 has some nice tools in it that will either let you crack the password or reset it.

Oh, and it's nice you don't have a principal like this http://www.itbusiness.ca/IT/client/en/home/News.asp?id=39987

 

[fullerene]

That's right... is it windows, noddy? I think there was a program called NTcrack that you could burn onto a cd and it would get you the login password. I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before. Not knowing Vista's admin account is locked by default, I took it to my school's computing center, and they booted it through a password cracking cd (i think it was called NTcrack, but don't quote me on that. It was clearly a burnt cd, though) which could crack the password if it was set, and it was even good enough to realize that vista had locked it, and offered to unlock it for us.

Apparently, if you have physical access to a machine and can use the cd drive, passwords are quite easy to break through.

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

Apparently, if you have physical access to a machine and can use the cd drive, passwords are quite easy to break through.

Yeah. There's pretty much no modern personal computer (incl. Windows, Mac, Linux, incl. fingerprint-scanners on laptops, etc. etc. not incl. super secret government computers) that cannot be cracked so long as you have physical access to it.

 

[Ogion]

Yea and no. If you encrypt your disk content with decent keys, it will be crackable, but it would take a long time.

Ogion

 

[Zero]

Ubuntu 9.10 is kind of pissing me off. Apparently, I need different software to run movies than the movie player. I don't watch a lot of legit DVDs, but I kind of wanted it this last week... It didn't work.

It also had issues with a deb, I don't know why. Before when I used Ubuntu it could use debs.

 

[Zero]

I still can't figure out why I can't get DVDs to play. I tried getting VLC I heard there might be some other problems.

But, I did figure out how to get a Cairo-dock working and the rotating cube.

Cairo-dock = Win

I also learned the short version of tar.gz. Sudo apt-get install. Yay! I feel noob.

 

[del]

I still can't figure out why I can't get DVDs to play. I tried getting VLC I heard there might be some other problems.

But, I did figure out how to get a Cairo-dock working and the rotating cube.

Cairo-dock = Win

I also learned the short version of tar.gz. Sudo apt-get install. Yay! I feel noob.

Make sure you have libdvdcss installed.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs

 

[Infinite Regress]

There's alot of problems with Jaunty- Karmic compatibility.
I updated pulseaudio drivers in Jaunty, then lost all sound.
New libraries not referenced to superseded libraries etc.

Back to Slackware I go

 

[eudemonia]

Ubunto is the fair trade alternative to Coke. www.ubuntu-trading.com
Coke exploits the powerless in India by stealing their water supplies in desert regions to make Coke and export it to regions plentiful in water.

That's only one of the accusations against them.

So please seek out ubunto coke.