Darkelve Posted January 9, 2005 Report Share Posted January 9, 2005 Well, being bored in the weekend I decided to try out Ubuntu. So I downloaded the LiveCD, "Warty" release. Here are, in short, my findings: (See also: aRTee's SuSe 9.2 review: http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?showtopic=10630 ) Gnome 2.8 really IS very user-friendly. The minimalist approach makes it very easy to find things. There is a smart selection of included applications, giving you about everything you need for most home users, but nothing more. Still, the applications including are probably best-of-breed: Gaim for IM, Evolution for mail, Firefox for web browsing, Totem for movies, Rythmbox for sound. Further Gthumb, File Roller, Gimp, GnomeMeeting, ... These applications all share the same feeling of a simple user interface and being able to tackle a limited number of tasks, but tackle them as good as possible. I did notice Rythmbox did not play my mp3 files, although when I tried Ogg files there was no problem. Probably you'll have to configure this yourself later? Of course, I am guessing this point will be moot because of apt-get/synaptic. The desktop is very nice, although if I compare with Mandrake and SuSe, it could use a bit more polish; e.g. the fonts are a bit worse and in a couple of other locations a bit more attention to detail and polish should be given as well. The default theme, however, is very calm, very warm. Hardware detection is excellent. Up to now, the only distro that recognized all my HW correctly was SuSe... until I put in this Ubuntu CD. Including my nVidia Geforce MX440 card... strangely lsmod shows loaded: nvidia_agp 6172 1 agpgart 27596 1 nvidia_agp Glxgears gave a satisfying (at least, I think) 424.200 FPS; Ubuntu/Debian apparently detected it had to set nVagp to 1, while in SuSe I had to do this manually before the random crashing stopped. At 1024*768, I get a 101Mhz refresh rate in Ubuntu. In SuSe only 81Mhz, although in SuSe I might have a slightly higher resolution. This Ubuntu thing is FAST. I'm talking about a machine with specs: AMD AthlonXp 1600+ 256MB DDR Ram While some other LiveCD's slugged away with these specs *cough* SuSe 9.2Live *cough* , the Ubuntu LiveCD is about the fastest I have seen. Just makes you wonder how it would speed along on a fresh install. I tried connecting to a Shared folder on our Local network as well, and this was no problem. Nice! File management was convenient, although I did not like a new window popping up for each folder I opened. I 'solved' it by specifying to open each window in a 'browser', but I'm not sure if this is the correct solution. It's definitely not straightforward. What I thoroughly enjoyed, however, was the "breadcrumb trail" the file manager offers you in the dialog boxes. This makes it trivial to switch back and forward to folders you've been already. All available partitions were detected and mounting them is as easy as clicking them. after which they show up on the desktop. My first impression: Ubuntu is a distro that, after installing and some small configuration, will be usable even for people with little knowledge of computers, let alone Operating Systems. The default desktop gives little choice, but it also gives little room to make mistakes. But I suspect this can easily be overcome with the included Synaptic program. Ubuntu's excellent hardware recognition and speed are yet more reasons to try it. In some places, it might lack the polish of some distro's that have a longer history, but I expect this situation will not exist for much longer. I am guessing that Ubuntu will be a boon especially for 'older' systems, but even if you have newer hardware, give it a try! Two thumbs up! Edit: obligatory screenshot attached Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmack Posted January 10, 2005 Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 Thanks for taking time to let us know! I was not aware they even had a live CD! Sounds nice! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted January 10, 2005 Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 I liked Ubuntu as well, except that the repositories progress too slowly, but that's just me, I like being as up to date as possible (and I could use the hoary repositories for bleeding edge if I wanted). If you want a very easy and quick install of a highly stable distro then Ubuntu is perfect, it really is great. But I'll stick to Gentoo ~x86 on my main box for now ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted January 10, 2005 Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 ubuntu is not bad at all, but yes, there are some minor things that still need to be fixed/polished. the developers are constantly working at it, so i am expecting that the hoary version will look better. (it will have e.g a bootsplash as far as i know. :)) i't like to see the usb-devices problem on a laptop solved. and i would like to see root/sudo work the way they should. some commands are still not working as expected. but nontheless, for the first distro they shipped out, they definitely made a bigger impact than anyone else with their very first distro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted January 10, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 <snip> i't like to see the usb-devices problem on a laptop solved. and i would like to see root/sudo work the way they should. some commands are still not working as expected. but nontheless, for the first distro they shipped out, they definitely made a bigger impact than anyone else with their very first distro. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, that is my impression. Side note: this is at least the 3rd 'major' distro I know of based on Debian. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 10, 2005 Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 can a group mod stick this into my other_linux_distro's.... Where I will sticky it!!!!! just what I wanted.... :D in my reviews of other distro's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted January 10, 2005 Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 can a group mod stick this into my other_linux_distro's.... Where I will sticky it!!!!! Done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted January 10, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 can a group mod stick this into my other_linux_distro's.... Where I will sticky it!!!!! just what I wanted.... :D in my reviews of other distro's <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You forgot aRTee's SuSe review. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 10, 2005 Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 You forgot aRTee's SuSe review. actually I just answered to quickly because i wanted to check aRTee hadn't already added it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted January 10, 2005 Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 Mm, I liked it better when it was in 'everything Linux'. Ah well... I still have aRTee devries Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisM Posted January 10, 2005 Report Share Posted January 10, 2005 I was not aware they even had a live CD! Sounds nice! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, if you visit the ubuntu web site, they'll even ship you out (at no cost!!) - a package containing the distro on a live cd AND an install cd. I presume you can also download. I ordered a few and have given them out to work colleagues for Christmas. One XP stalwart friend of mine likes the live cd and is gonna dual boot :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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