If the rumors are to be believed you might see Steam on it sometime this year, and I played with the beta and you could plug an ipod in and play from it in rhythembox, and Itunes runs decently in wine if you really need it, and egad, my Cannon printer is actually plug and play in 10.04! I was really excited about that, you know the little things.
It wont replace windows 7 on a primary desktop, but on an older machine, maybe a laptop that is putting along with XP, its highly advisable you try Ubuntu 10.04. Its come a long way.
I've installed it in Wubi on my desktop to see how it performs. Last time I put it on a laptop, I was disappointed with the ACPI handling - it could suck the power right out of it. If I can get 8 hours in Vista and 3.5 on Ubuntu, the choice was pretty clear, and part of that was my laziness in not wanting to figure out how to tweak it.
Anyway, yeah. Gonna play with it on the desktop today to see how the new UI and other changes look.
It's unfortunate that power management isn't very strong in Linux. I've managed to get good battery life out of Ubuntu, but it took installed laptop-mode-tools and doing a lot of tweaking of settings (for which there was no GUI). I really think someone needs to invest some serious time in building a better power management interface.
I have just upgraded from 9.10 to 10.04. I like to delete all of the gnome settings to see the changes on the desktop as it was intended. But I did not like the new default Gnome theme and went back to Clearlooks. Fonts were too big and colors were too dark. Other than the looks and some updated software and kernel, I did not see too many changes. Even some of the GUI and superuser bugs happening with VNC server are still there with some new additions. I understand that VNC problems are not high priority but still I was hoping a fix with the new version.
I will upgrade Kubuntu 9.10 as well running on my desktop in VirtualBox. It is amazing that the complete OS is upgraded on the fly.
I'm really liking the darker theme. I'm glad they FINALLY got rid of the brown. I'm still on the fence about the left-hand buttons, though.
At PenguiCon this weekend Jorge Castro had a good talk and demo about the new release. So far, his complaints and lauds pretty closely resemble my own.
I think the endgame for Linux is acceptance that Ubuntu is "THE" desktop users distribution, and finally focus the community's efforts in that one place.
The things they could do if they had a singular point of focus. Yeah, I know thats kind of "anti" Linux, but lets face it, its the lack of focus that is holding it back.
I'd love to see the other distributions community's concede that Ubuntu is the everyman's desktop edition. Maybe have Gnome or KDE selectable on the fly (if thats possible) and just go with that as the community's desktop distro. Start developing for it heavily, and let the other projects fade, or perhaps morph for purposes other than desktop. Of course there will be separate distros for enterprise servers, and others for light duty netbooks and such, but it would be nice to see the Linux faithful concede that Ubuntu is the best desktop distro, and the one they should focus on if they want wider adoption of Linux.
His presentation skills are sub par, I have to say, I agree with the better part of what he is saying. Worth a listen.
I would not say Linux sucks on the desktop but (what I am going to say hurts me) I still prefer even Windows XP over any Linux distro as my desktop OS.
On the server side (maybe embedded as well), the story is completely different.
I would not say Linux sucks on the desktop but (what I am going to say hurts me) I still prefer even Windows XP over any Linux distro as my desktop OS.
On the server side (maybe embedded as well), the story is completely different.
Yeah, I don't think he says Sucks, meaning it really Sucks, but its a challenge to say we could be doing a hell of allot better. You can tell, he is a developer that loves Linux, who is trying to challenge the old community paradigm.
Here is the thing, when you see how awesome Ubuntu has become over the past few years, and when you consider all the possibilities of a really amazing open source OS, you have to give them allot of credit considering how fragmented the community resources are. Ubuntu has become a really usable desktop OS over a few short years. Now, if the community shifts gears and says, okay, Linux can be all things, but, maybe Ubuntu is the best way to serve the needs of the desktop user. They get everyone on the same driver development model, they get everyone working on the same protocols so they don't have to duplicate efforts across multiple distributions, then some really amazing stuff could happen.
I know it goes against the open spirit of the community, but if its still a move for the greater good? I don't think the other desktop projects can ignore the impact Ubuntu has had.
Openness of Linux is in the sense that there is nothing stopping others from competing with the leader other than what they do with the code and what they add to it. I will for sure acknowledge Ubuntu in their effort to challenge the status quo and achievements in the desktop space. But it is still far from a measurable success. What Linux needs for success, other than improvement, is a platform shift that will level the playing field and reset the status quo. Netbooks were partly such kind of an event. Netbooks were capable of doing many things but not with the resource requirements of Windows. I believe the upcoming tablets will be an even bigger challenge for Windows and Linux will find even larger share in this space. In the end, I think, Linux will not succeed in the desktop but desktop as we know will disappear and Linux will rise in the new mobile/portable computing devices (call them PC if you want).
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KwitkoSheriff of Banning (Retired)By the thing near the stuffIcrontian
edited May 2010
The Linux community as a whole needs to address the driver issue. Installing drivers is a horrendous horror show filled with sights so evil it would make Satan himself cringe in fear. I spent eons attempting to get a printer installed. And don't get me started on connecting to Active Directory.
Forget the multitude of distributions out there. They all need to get their acts together. The average user can barely install new hardware in Windows. If the computer geeks of Icrontic struggle with Linux- with the exception of Drasnor, who compiled his own brain using GCC- imagine how Joe Sixpack is going to fare.
Linux has its strengths, but its weaknesses keep it from being a viable consumer OS. Like mirage says, it may find its niche in more portable apps, where adding printers and such isn't a big deal.
The Linux community as a whole needs to address the driver issue. Installing drivers is a horrendous horror show filled with sights so evil it would make Satan himself cringe in fear. I spent eons attempting to get a printer installed. And don't get me started on connecting to Active Directory.
10.04 has drastically improved hardware support. 9.10 was pretty good for me, but 10.04 hit everything in my lappy right away, restricted drivers and all.
The real problem is precisely that, restricted hardware/drivers. Until hardware companies get their acts together and start putting out something that can be open-sourced, then we're always going to have hardware problems on Linux, no matter how much the community tries to do.
10.04 has drastically improved hardware support. 9.10 was pretty good for me, but 10.04 hit everything in my lappy right away, restricted drivers and all.
The real problem is precisely that, restricted hardware/drivers. Until hardware companies get their acts together and start putting out something that can be open-sourced, then we're always going to have hardware problems on Linux, no matter how much the community tries to do.
For the first time ever my Cannon MFP driver works without a fuss (in x86 mind you)
Forget the 64 bit version, drivers there are a nightmare, but the x86 is making progress.
Here I thought it was hemeroids, but it must be horseshoes. I've installed Ubuntu on 3 systems that were destined for the scrap heap and it's brought them all back to life with no driver issues whatsoever. In fact it's allowed me to go to WPA2 on an old belkin wireless card that belkin stopped writing drivers for at WinXP. Neither Vista or Win7 would go WPA at all on that card.
One of these days, I'm going to get my Xen setup working so I'll be able to run my Win7 in parallel, rather than as a VM. I think 10.04 would be a good base to use, since it's an LTS release, and is supported 'till 2013 for the desktop version (2015 for Server).
Edit: Looks like the xen-tools package is still not available yet. Once it is, then we (being me and whoever else is interested) should be able to get a solid Xen setup going. Time to start looking for a cheap 500GB+ drive, methinks.
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
Comments
It wont replace windows 7 on a primary desktop, but on an older machine, maybe a laptop that is putting along with XP, its highly advisable you try Ubuntu 10.04. Its come a long way.
If you have at least 1GB of RAM I suspect it will run decently.
Anyway, yeah. Gonna play with it on the desktop today to see how the new UI and other changes look.
I will upgrade Kubuntu 9.10 as well running on my desktop in VirtualBox. It is amazing that the complete OS is upgraded on the fly.
At PenguiCon this weekend Jorge Castro had a good talk and demo about the new release. So far, his complaints and lauds pretty closely resemble my own.
The things they could do if they had a singular point of focus. Yeah, I know thats kind of "anti" Linux, but lets face it, its the lack of focus that is holding it back.
I'd love to see the other distributions community's concede that Ubuntu is the everyman's desktop edition. Maybe have Gnome or KDE selectable on the fly (if thats possible) and just go with that as the community's desktop distro. Start developing for it heavily, and let the other projects fade, or perhaps morph for purposes other than desktop. Of course there will be separate distros for enterprise servers, and others for light duty netbooks and such, but it would be nice to see the Linux faithful concede that Ubuntu is the best desktop distro, and the one they should focus on if they want wider adoption of Linux.
This is easily possible. You can even add XFCE and any muber of other GUIs of your choice. Just logout and login again with the new option.
I will give it another try. The buttons on left was also annoying for me too. I am looking for some consistency with the Windows, I guess.
Agreed. Number of options or distros do not matter. In the end, users need an OS that works for their purposes.
His presentation skills are sub par, I have to say, I agree with the better part of what he is saying. Worth a listen.
I would not say Linux sucks on the desktop but (what I am going to say hurts me) I still prefer even Windows XP over any Linux distro as my desktop OS.
On the server side (maybe embedded as well), the story is completely different.
Yeah, I don't think he says Sucks, meaning it really Sucks, but its a challenge to say we could be doing a hell of allot better. You can tell, he is a developer that loves Linux, who is trying to challenge the old community paradigm.
Here is the thing, when you see how awesome Ubuntu has become over the past few years, and when you consider all the possibilities of a really amazing open source OS, you have to give them allot of credit considering how fragmented the community resources are. Ubuntu has become a really usable desktop OS over a few short years. Now, if the community shifts gears and says, okay, Linux can be all things, but, maybe Ubuntu is the best way to serve the needs of the desktop user. They get everyone on the same driver development model, they get everyone working on the same protocols so they don't have to duplicate efforts across multiple distributions, then some really amazing stuff could happen.
I know it goes against the open spirit of the community, but if its still a move for the greater good? I don't think the other desktop projects can ignore the impact Ubuntu has had.
Forget the multitude of distributions out there. They all need to get their acts together. The average user can barely install new hardware in Windows. If the computer geeks of Icrontic struggle with Linux- with the exception of Drasnor, who compiled his own brain using GCC- imagine how Joe Sixpack is going to fare.
Linux has its strengths, but its weaknesses keep it from being a viable consumer OS. Like mirage says, it may find its niche in more portable apps, where adding printers and such isn't a big deal.
10.04 has drastically improved hardware support. 9.10 was pretty good for me, but 10.04 hit everything in my lappy right away, restricted drivers and all.
The real problem is precisely that, restricted hardware/drivers. Until hardware companies get their acts together and start putting out something that can be open-sourced, then we're always going to have hardware problems on Linux, no matter how much the community tries to do.
For the first time ever my Cannon MFP driver works without a fuss (in x86 mind you)
Forget the 64 bit version, drivers there are a nightmare, but the x86 is making progress.
I'm currently running x64. Everything picked up just fine.
Really, interesting.... I'll have to give it another go.
Edit: Looks like the xen-tools package is still not available yet. Once it is, then we (being me and whoever else is interested) should be able to get a solid Xen setup going. Time to start looking for a cheap 500GB+ drive, methinks.
Someone hold me... I'm scared.
That seems to be the overarching theme after the upgrades.
"I just upgraded and everything's quiet... Too quiet"