Ubuntu 9.10, the Windows killer..No

[MidnightCowboy]

Mimics by own experiences exactly!

[Ritho]

MidnightCowboy,

I always clean install. I have never attempted an upgrade install and so I don't no if system updates will fix your problems with like VLC crashing or Firefox extensions malfunctioning. I usually apply system updates, but have never experienced them helping me with many problems I may have encountered previously. Yet I have been lucky, I guess, because I have had very few problems and most of them minor. I have had some bad experiences with other distros, one of the more common has been streaming media. As for my physical system I usually buy stuff that has been out for a while ( = Cheeper) and is already well supported by the Linux community. I did buy a netbook, Acer Aspire One, and while the wireless works great, I have never been able to get Ethernet to work with Ubuntu, which is oddly backwards from what most users experience.

Anyway I have found Ubuntu 9.04 "minty flavor" (Linux Mint 7) very stable on my machine and am sticking with it for now until I see the bug reports settling down a bit.

-Ritho

[MidnightCowboy]

Thanks for sharing your own experiences. On the plus side, my tech guy here is also an Ubuntu fanatic so I can be sure that once the bugs get ironed out I will end up with a usable install again. This situation is also forcing me to get more familiar with Vista (LOL) which in reality is likely to be of more use in general here on the site than Linux in as far as visitor queries and comments are concerned.

[bk_7312]

Originally Posted by Jojoyee

Ubuntu 9.10 separates the control items into "Preference" and "Administration" by default, accessible from:

System > Preferences
System > Administration

Some users prefer to have a Control Center, which can be enabled following the steps:

1. Right-click System (or Main Menu)
2. Select "Edit Menus"
3. Select System in the Menus column
4. Tick "Control Center" and click "Close".

Then you can access the Control Center from:

System > Control Center

Thanks Jojoyee!

I always preferred an all-in-one control panel, don't really like things to be scattered.

As for Ubuntu in VirtualBox, I had quite a pleasant experience, just that everything was not as out-of-the-box as I had expected, MEPIS feels more out-of-the-box to me, but that doesn't matter, Linux has been my main desktop for more that half a year now so I knew my way around, and by 'I knew my way around', I actually mean something along the lines of 'I click everything I think was relevant to what I want to do and google the rest!' and 'The command line is my last resort! MUAHAHAHAHA!'. Just the usuals.

The only problem I've encountered was that Ubuntu failed to detect my monitor!? This may just be a small problem with VirtualBox but it's weird that the monitor was not detected even though everything is displayed properly (I can see the desktop). Well, that's pretty much sums up everything.

P.S - I almost forgot, here comes Kubuntu: http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/kubuntu-9-10.html

[Ritho]

As I mentioned in previous posts I waited a while until many of the initial bugs were fixed before taking the plunge and trying out Karmic.

I fresh installed on another hard drive, and setup was smooth and problem free. I thought it was odd how much time the install process spent downloading language packs, but other than that I have no complaints with the install process.

Everything worked "out of the box" and overall I am pleased with the new Ubuntu. However, like many others, I don't like the new GDM, and its lack of configurablity/customization. Many have been downgrading back to 2.20 to get back the ability to use themes and easily change the boot screens.

If you are interested here is a good guide to doing the downgrade. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8350408#post8350408


You could also try installing an alternative such as KDM or SLIM

My verdict is if you are looking for a great free OS that can compete with Windows 7 Ubuntu 9.10 is a good choice. If you are a themer (i.e. you like to customize everything about the gui) and you don't like putting in a lot of terminal time tweeking, then consider sticking with 9.04 I have a feeling that someone will create a GUI to handle many of the tweeks soon.

[Jojoyee]

Originally Posted by Ritho

I fresh installed on another hard drive, and setup was smooth and problem free. I thought it was odd how much time the install process spent downloading language packs, but other than that I have no complaints with the install process.

There's a skip button at the right to skip downloading the packs.

[Ritho]

Originally Posted by Jojoyee

There's a skip button at the right to skip downloading the packs.

Yes I saw that I could skip them, but I need/use two different languages, and it seemed simpler to let them be installed then rather than later. I just thought it was weird they seemed like such large downloads. I have a 12Mbps connection and even downloading the Ubuntu image only took a few minutes. It seemed like the packs took almost as long if not longer to download. It may be that the connection to the server was slow or was under heavy use. Maybe I missed it but I did not see an indicator anywhere on download size or speed. No big deal though unless you are still on dial-up or something

[MidnightCowboy]

Well, one month into the 9.10 distro cycle and I'm still far from convinced by the current crop of forum bugs and other errors being reported. I did download a fresh image yesterday because my tech-on-a-bike arrives again tomorrow morning to rescue my failed upgrade. He's aggressively suggesting Fedora 12 this time which I have been booting several times a day from the USB live image I downloaded (KDE variant) to play with and I do like it. Apparently the full install issues plaguing V11 have not re-emerged with this release and despite being "cutting edge" it appears to be at least as stable as the current state of 9.10. I'll talk with him face to face in the morning first before making a final decision but I might go for this anyway and maybe re-visit Ubuntu another couple of months or so down the road

[Jojoyee]

Originally Posted by Ritho

Yes I saw that I could skip them, but I need/use two different languages, and it seemed simpler to let them be installed then rather than later. I just thought it was weird they seemed like such large downloads. I have a 12Mbps connection and even downloading the Ubuntu image only took a few minutes. It seemed like the packs took almost as long if not longer to download...

Good observation and high bandwidth.

There's DVD Downloads which says the main benefit of the DVD downloads is to get access to all of the available language packs. So I suppose the language pack is included and will make the installation faster. But I have not tried it.

[novice]

If you use Ubuntu can you use all of your current software that is designed for Widows?