Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

pelle.k · 2007-10-26 07:40:54

It is. However, the topic starter in no way motivates his opening post, and doesn't seem to want to spark any (argumented) discussion.

So, the function of this forum are to argue? Not discuss, and share experiences? I guess i'll have to find somewhere else to be then.

tomk · 2007-10-26 09:01:04

This is, indeed, the Linux Discussion forum, and as the Index page says, it is for "General discussion about GNU/Linux". I don't have a problem with this thread being here, although I personally think it is too distro-specific to qualify as "general discussion". However, I do have a problem with some of the responses, so I'll be watching this thread. and taking whatever action may be required.

For those who feel that this thread shouldn't be here, there are two options - contribute to the discussion in a rational way, or just ignore it. For example, if I wasn't a FA, I wouldn't have read this thread.

LinuxViking · 2007-10-26 17:03:13

jbromley wrote:

LinuxViking wrote:
Mikko777 wrote:
It's nice to try new stuff but what I don't get is why ppl run many distros side by side?
What benefits do you get with running both arch and ubuntu?
I never understood this either...except the windows/linux partition for games or work or whatever...
I don't really run two distros side by side, but I do have an extra partition where I try out different distros. For me, it's mostly about seeing what "state of the art" looks like for Linux. I like to see how are things like wireless setup, power management, Compiz, etc. work out of the box. Maybe the latest will even be good enough that I'll switch, though this has only happened after my previous distro caused me notable problems, like the time an Ubuntu upgrade hosed my system and I moved to openSUSE. It's also interesting to see if there are any new software or ideas I can port to my main (Arch) system.
There have also been a couple of times where I was looking for something in specific and wanted to see which distro gave it to me most easily. For example, after running openSUSE for a while, I got tired of its sluggishness. This set off a search for a lighter, faster setup. I settled on Arch after trying a number of other distros (Vector, Yoper, etc.) Incidentally, Arch had been on my second partition for some time. I just needed a little motivation to make the switch.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense to me. I used to switch around because one thing or another would bother me, but I also have a smaller hard drive, so maybe after christmas when I buy a 500GB hard drive I might run a 32 bit installation along with arch64. I have been half thinking of installing damn small or puppy linux on a memory stick and using it to run wine and other applications in 32 bit. It would be nice because they take up such a tiny amount of space.

Also those smaller linux platforms provide a lot of opportunity to make frankenstein computers out of old parts. I ran DSL from a 64MB ram desktop with a completely broken hard drive and it worked perfectly...

Last edited by LinuxViking (2007-10-26 17:04:16)

sjb933 · 2007-10-26 19:07:51

tomk wrote:

This is, indeed, the Linux Discussion forum, and as the Index page says, it is for "General discussion about GNU/Linux". I don't have a problem with this thread being here, although I personally think it is too distro-specific to qualify as "general discussion". However, I do have a problem with some of the responses, so I'll be watching this thread. and taking whatever action may be required.
For those who feel that this thread shouldn't be here, there are two options - contribute to the discussion in a rational way, or just ignore it. For example, if I wasn't a FA, I wouldn't have read this thread.

Well... the Arch forum doesn't have an "Other Distro" discussion section *hint hint*, so I found this to be the most appropriate place to post. I didn't realize a few select people would react negatively to the mention of a competitive distro (that I'm sure everyone knows of well). I do think it's beneficial not only to discuss but to analyze what is going on in the other parts of the linux community. And while I may have not been very specific about pros & cons with my Gutsy experience, I was merely trying to spark a conversation and state the fact that for the first time, Ubuntu impressed me.

This is no way implies that I am less impressed with Arch or that Ubuntu is better or any of that jazz. I like arch, and I will continue to use Arch. I've learned more about linux through Arch than any other distro and I very much like a lean system and the KISS mentality.

Anywho, this thread seems to have steered in a good direction (although it has forked into a conversation about this thread itself :P )

I think it's important to notice though that people have started talking about their experience with X distro (Ubuntu/Suse/etc). IMO it would be nice to have a designated area for discussing other distros.

Shane

Last edited by sjb933 (2007-10-26 19:10:17)

sjb933 · 2007-10-26 19:13:19

Also, I've gotta say that Gnome + Compiz + AWN (Avant Window Navigator) is REALLY nice. I'm highly impressed with AWN. The team has done a nice job.

-Shane

MaikelG · 2007-11-04 19:10:53

krazyshane wrote:

Well... I have been using it for a few days now, and for the first time with any Ubuntu version, I am wowed. Everything worked perfectly hardware wise, including compiz-fusion right out of the box. I now intend to keep it install parallel to my Arch install. It feels pretty snappy too, and everything has been fairly simple. Now... arch is fun to get down and dirty with, but as simplicity goes, for the first time I can honestly see Ubuntu being a viable replacement for Windows/OSX.
You guys should all give it a test drive
-Shane

I ran a testinstallation as well.
And: Wow! Everything is fine out-of-box.
After several days of playing around i have to say that's just nice! There are several apps i don't need and i have to remove and add a lot of applications. So maybe a so called "server-installation" (the minimal installation) may solve the problem for me.
But why? I'm still happy with arch an so I still use Arch!

Ubuntu is a good Disto for Windows-Users (as openSuse is also)!

xd-0 · 2007-11-04 20:31:41

Ubuntu is one of those distros that actually can compete on the market over the domination Microsoft have on the desktop side. All GNU/Linux enthusiasts should back them up, as well as other distros that is "newbie" friendly.
It's not a mather of what distro is best bla bla bla. It's about promoting the GNU/Linux concept to the market. And in time people will drop to many other distros that fit their need.

I ran Ubuntu for a long time, it's easy and a great distro that often work out of the box. But now Im running arch because I wanted to have something more slim. Its all about taste and choices,

thorstenhirsch · 2007-11-04 21:08:15

FULL ACK @xd-0!

Misfit138 · 2007-11-05 00:54:38

Mikko777 wrote:

It's nice to try new stuff but what I don't get is why ppl run many distros side by side?
What benefits do you get with running both arch and ubuntu?

I'm always trying out another distro alongside my Arch and windows systems. It's fun to keep informed of new releases and see how things are progressing elsewhere in the GNU universe.
Slackware stayed the longest; I really liked it, and it's quite simple and similar to Arch. I am pretty much done with Gentoo anymore; it is just not for me. I also had Kubuntu 7.10 for a couple days; strongly disliked it. PCLinuxOS is a really fun distro. Quite snappy, very stable, fast bootups. Vector is nice too, although the repos are limited, being regular Slack repos and mirrors seemed slow.
For me, Arch is the best and these side-by-side tests serve to solidify this over and over again.

Last edited by Misfit138 (2007-11-05 00:57:52)

mivo · 2007-11-15 16:26:12

Ubuntu is the distro that made me drop Windows completely. Gutsy was a little troublesome on my new desktop (new'ish hardware) and getting it installed took some time (it liked neither my 8800GTS nor my Abit AB9 Pro out of the box and first refused to find the CD it booted from, then after the install threw blank screens at me). Once it was installed, though, it worked very well.

I'm switching my desktop to Arch now because I want to know my system better and know what is installed (and only have installed what I installed myself). I love pacman, and I like the rolling release concept. The "cyclical releases" system of most other distros doesn't feel "right" to me -- I don't want to reinstall every x months and not easily get new software versions inbetween the releases.

But anyway, installation troubles on some hardware (that Arch did not have in my case) aside, Gutsy is a solid "first Linux experience" distro that shows off that Linux is suited and ready for the desktop. It also has a very large community with friendly people and incredibly fast moving forums (almost too fast), which is one of its strongest points. Without Ubuntu I probably wouldn't use Linux now. (Ironically, it was also in the Ubuntu forums where I learned about Arch. )

dolby · 2007-11-15 16:56:24

the funny thing about ubuntu is that on the cds it ships it doesnt even mention gnu or linux. instead they use the term ubuntu operating system.

nephish99 · 2007-11-18 06:21:44

i have four computers in my house, we have a large, computer using family. I installed Ubuntu 7.10 ( or whatever the newest release is ) on all of them except mine. Here is why. My wife and kids have very basic computer needs. So i like to put something on their computers that will work, takes very little time and effort to get working, etc.. On my own computer, however, i will take the time to edit rc.conf etc... because i love the experience of using arch. Besides, i only have to do all that stuff every once in a long while because after setup, arch is easier to use ( in my own opinion ) than most other systems. I like how arch is a kinda build your own operating system type of linux. Only what i want without a bazillion useless dependencies etc.. no bloat, know where everything is, etc.. I just like it, so it is worth it to me. I have been able to convert a few of my friends and co-workers over to Linux.. know what i install on their computers to get them started? That's right, Ubuntu, because i am not going to be around to help them when they need something changed, installed, upgraded, setup.. etc.. Ubuntu multiplies the chances that they will be able to do all that on their own, and get a good feeling out of a user-friendly version of Linux. I have a laptop on order that i will use for work, Arch will go on that.
Really, if i set a computer up for someone else, i will give them Ubuntu, but if it's for me, it will be Arch. The only exception is the time or two i have set up linux on old hardware.. pentium with 500mhz 250 RAM.. that gets Arch too. Even Xubuntu is no match for Speed as a simple Arch, openbox setup.

Klepto · 2007-11-18 08:00:33

mivo wrote:

Ubuntu is the distro that made me drop Windows completely.

It was Windows ME for me

I feel a small rant coming on...

First let me explain where I am coming from. As soon as winME was released I realised what all the hype (even then) about Linux was about. I'd toyed with Linux since the mid 90s, and had some experience of *nix from college, even so it took me a year or so before I really felt at home. Things are much easier for new converts now, the pace of change in the OSS world is much faster than with Windows. My first Linux distro was Mandrake, bought from my local PC World. It lasted on my machine about 3 or 4 months before I got annoyed that all the documentation on the net wasn't applicable to my (somewhat non-standard) choice of distro. I learned the lesson early that ease-of-use comes at a price, and that price is increased complexity and the abandonment of standards.

I really wanted to learn how to get the best from this strange and wonderful beast I was using, so I decided to give LFS a try. It was the best thing I could have done, it took me 6 months or so and several reinstalls, but finally I had a system I was really happy with. I finally had a 'standard' Linux system and I knew how it all worked, and what every file on my disk was for. Even the search function in the KDE documentation browser worked for me, Mandrake had disabled it because it was a real pain to get working. Things ran a lot faster too, because I was only running what I wanted, compiled and configured the way I wanted, and optimised for the hardware I was running it on. So I had learned my next lesson: use the source, get rid of the crap and take the time to do things right. I swore I would never use a binary distro again.

My wonderful LFS system was a joy to behold, but I found that I was spending 80% of my computer time feeding and watering it. Updates for my installed software would be released every day, and it took hours to perform without a package manager. I started looking for ways to automate the process, I wrote a whole bunch of bash scripts, and finally I found SGL. This was great, I could have a source based distro and the convenience of a package manager. A lot of my time was still spent tweaking the configuration and build options, but once things were installed updates were automatic and usually didn't require me to think. There was a very political and ugly forking process, but despite that I still look back on my time with SGL (and later SMGL and Lunar) with fondness. I would still be using them today were it not for the fact that updates often broke things. It was because of one last broken system caused by a bad update that I learned: source based distros add a complexity all their own. Local configuration may lead to situations package maintainers didn't anticipate, and you have to maintain multiple build systems for all the different packages.

It was at this time I switched to debian, a much more sensible system than mandrake. It worked fine for me, but debian has problems of it's own (politics, slow release cycle, OSS zealotry), so I switched to Kubuntu not long after. Ubuntu is what debian should have been all along, and it's getting better all the time. (K)ubuntu is Linux's best hope for breaking the M$ stranglehold on desktop computing and bringing Linux to the masses, I wish them all the best. Having said that they do fall into the trap of trying to make everything automatic and user friendly, I don't consider myself one of the mass (see my sig) and would like to configure my system the way I want it. This is possible with Ubuntu, but you have to work through all the layers that protect you from the nuts and bolts. It shouldn't be that difficult.

I switched to Arch from Kubuntu Gutsy about a week ago and I'm very happy I did. I only installed Arch becuase I'm on a (commercial) beta and had a problem, I wanted to make sure it wasn't distro-specific. I intended to re-install Kubuntu, perhaps alongside Arch, but after a few hours I was hooked. Arch seems to give the best of both worlds, it has the flexibility of the source based distros when you need it and the ease of use of the user friendly ones when you don't. It's early days yet but I really like the KISS philosophy, geeks love complexity but in truth it is the enemy. Arch is not for everyone, my 10 year old son asked for Arch but I refused, he can admin his own Kubuntu box with gui tools but on arch it takes a bit more understanding. The important thing is: once you have that understanding, Arch lets you use it when you need to without getting in your way.

Rant over. I'm not sure what the point of all that was, personally I'd like computing to have gone the Forth way instead of the c/*nix way back in the 70s, but Linux is what we got and I'll save the Forth rant for another day

Misfit138 · 2007-11-18 15:25:01

Klepto,

I enjoyed your post immensely. Please elaborate on FORTH.
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.....
I agree with everything you have stated, especially the concept that source-based adds a (sometimes) annoying and fragile complexity all its own. Arch is perfect for me, too. I love Slackware, but installing software on Arch is so much easier, and Arch also allows me to expediently build my own system from binary packages. I wouldn't try to build up from a base system on Slack, it would take me too long; I always installed everything possible from the Slack DVD so I wouldn't have to 'think' about it later.
Arch strikes a perfect balance between customization and automation.

floke · 2007-11-18 21:53:39

Dude, set your 10 yr old free!
My 4 yr old wants Arch - I've moved my system and my wife's over to Arch from Ubuntu after all the upbreak crap from 7.10 - so he feels a bit left out with Ubuntu - but he's happy enough when I remind him that he's the only one in the house running E17 rather than Gnome.

Klepto · 2007-11-18 22:59:02

Misfit138 wrote:

I enjoyed your post immensely. Please elaborate on FORTH.

Thank you. Request noted, I'm coding in Forth atm, but next time I get stuck I'll take the time to rant about it

floke wrote:

Dude, set your 10 yr old free!

Heh, one of the things I love about Ubuntu is that it's so easy for other people to use. My son is autistic, so while he's very smart and good at learning stuff he's not always good at spending time really studying stuff in depth. If I gave him Arch he'd just get frustrated and I'd have to help him out. That's time that could be spent ranting about obscure computer stuffs He'll get Arch one day, when I feel he's ready, but today is not that day.

Rumor · 2007-11-19 13:32:53

mivo wrote:

It also has a very large community with friendly people and incredibly fast moving forums (almost too fast), which is one of its strongest points.

I much prefer the Arch forums. Ubuntu's forums have so much traffic it is easy to get lost.

mivo wrote:

Without Ubuntu I probably wouldn't use Linux now. (Ironically, it was also in the Ubuntu forums where I learned about Arch. )

Welcome to Arch, Mivo. There are a bunch of Arch users, myself included, who came to Arch via Ubuntu. The "Arch Linux Talk" thread in the Ubuntu "Other OS Talk" sub-forum is posted to by several of those users. When you find something as good as Arch, you want to share it with others

Klepto · 2007-11-21 14:40:29

Misfit138 wrote:

Please elaborate on FORTH.

Done. Sorry it took so long, but I'd have hated to elaborate in a half-hearted way

.:B:. · 2007-11-21 17:51:37

pelle.k wrote:

It is. However, the topic starter in no way motivates his opening post, and doesn't seem to want to spark any (argumented) discussion.
So, the function of this forum are to argue? Not discuss, and share experiences? I guess i'll have to find somewhere else to be then.

Nice to see you have a critical view on things. As your quote of my quote shows: it says 'discussion'. It also says 'argumented', which means this is not like discussing tomorrow's wheather or what name the next hurricane will have.

Just saying 'you should try it' is not my idea of a good start of a discussion. But hey - we're free to have differing opinions, aren't we?

Jinxxed · 2007-11-22 22:14:45

I've been around Linux since the days of SLS and i can say that very few things have ever wowed me in the world of OS's and distros, three distros have come close, OpenSuSE, Slackware and of course Arch, OpenBSD isn't a Linux distro so i didn't include it with them but this is the one OS that HAS wowed me.

Ubuntu, tried it, realized it's a knock off of Debian without official support for anything beyond the very basics, unlike Debian that has official support for every package in their repos, said meh and moved on.

To me, things like stability and usability matters and quite frankly, Ubuntu has neither. (IME)

Trust me, i'd had said the same thing of Arch because i'm used to Slack, but then i discovered the wonder that rc.conf really is.

nephish · 2007-11-22 22:31:49

Jinxxed wrote:

Ubuntu, tried it, realized it's a knock off of Debian without official support for anything beyond the very basics....

i would say that you are not really giving ubuntu their due credit. They have managed to take debian, which at the time of ubuntu starting up, had a reputation of being very difficult to install for any newbie.. and creating a desktop distribution of linux that is very very accessible to new linux users.
They took a solid distro as their basis, and built on that and created something that from the user experience is much different than debian, even now that debian is much easier to install also. It is become very popular for a good reason. With it's popularity, it is also easier to find a how-to blog or instruction for ubuntu than it is for any other distro out there.

Now, mostly what i use ubuntu for is to give me a quick xorg.conf to move to a shared folder that i can copy back to my computer when i am installing Arch It is, however the default distro that i install for someone else who i get to talk into test driving linux when they are frustrated with MS.

Jinxxed · 2007-11-23 05:25:35

nephish wrote:

Jinxxed wrote:
Ubuntu, tried it, realized it's a knock off of Debian without official support for anything beyond the very basics....
i would say that you are not really giving ubuntu their due credit. They have managed to take debian, which at the time of ubuntu starting up, had a reputation of being very difficult to install for any newbie.. and creating a desktop distribution of linux that is very very accessible to new linux users.
They took a solid distro as their basis, and built on that and created something that from the user experience is much different than debian, even now that debian is much easier to install also. It is become very popular for a good reason. With it's popularity, it is also easier to find a how-to blog or instruction for ubuntu than it is for any other distro out there.
Now, mostly what i use ubuntu for is to give me a quick xorg.conf to move to a shared folder that i can copy back to my computer when i am installing Arch It is, however the default distro that i install for someone else who i get to talk into test driving linux when they are frustrated with MS.

I would say that you don't understand that a lot of users are having huge problems with Gutsy BECAUSE of the unofficial packages installed which is packages beyond the very basics.

The thing i was remarking on was that everything beyond basics is not officially supported by official package maintainers like it is in Debian where everything you can download from the repos has been certified by the package maintainers.

Your use for ubuntu is to create an xorg.conf that won't even be viable in Arch that uses non standard directories for some things? How about you just run hwd -xa and edit from there, it's not hard, in fact it's a helluvalot faster and easier than trying to change Arch's directory structure to fit with an ubuntu (or Debian, Fedora, SuSE or whatever) xorg.conf.

Default distro should be OpenSuSE in that case, it'll save both you and them time and headaches.

Ubuntus biggest problem is that too few are running "testing" or "current" so the testing that goes into the distro is pretty much limited compared to many other distros. (Slackwares current is many orders of magnitude more stable than ANY Ubuntu release).

I'll give ubuntu one thing though, i run KDE on all systems except Ubuntu, mostly because Kubuntu truly sucks but also because ubuntu has managed to tame the beast that is gnome better then any other distro i know of.

nephish99 · 2007-11-23 15:05:23

Jinxxed,

excellent reply !

i did have a question though,, when you mention that Ubuntu has been able to tame the beast that is gnome, what do you mean by gnome being a beast ? i only ask out of desire to know, i am not challenging.. i have only run gnome on arch and ubuntu. It seems like gnome is used by Ubuntu, along with a bazillion other packages to make a desktop solution.. I like that i can install gnome in Arch, and then i get to add what goes with it... i mean, if you apt-get install Ubuntu-desktop, from like a server install, you are downloading not only gnome, but a lot lot lot of other stuff. If i pacman -S gnome.. i get gnome.. I don't have to have evolution if i don't want it. .heck, i don't even have to have gedit.

i agree with you about too few people running testing versions.... In the debian community, lots of folk run testing or even unstable as their regular desktop. Only the zealots run Ubuntu very much sooner than the official release of a new version. Personally, on my wifes computer (Ubuntu) i dist-upgrade about two weeks before,,, usually pretty stable by then.

i still really believe that the folks at Ubuntu have done a superb job bringing linux to an accessable level.

buttons · 2007-11-23 15:19:14

My computer at work is running Gutsy, and I'm just happy it comes with real font rendering out of the box. If I couldn't install the *-lcd packages in arch from AUR, it would be goodbye instantly. Ugly fonts is my single biggest pet peeve on any system.

As for everything else...I installed openbox from apt and life was fine. Simplicity on ubuntu.

Would I run it on my home computer? I do also have a side-by-side installation of ubuntu, but only because ubuntu tends to come with extremely usable pre-configured configuration files in their packages. If I need ideas for arch, or just want to know how ubuntu managed to get some behaviour I really like, I'll have a trawl through its /etc directory to see what they did.

My input to the windows discussion: Yes, ubuntu dragged me away from windows (after years on gentoo, I'd given up on linux). I also learned about arch from the ubuntu forums.

nephish · 2007-11-23 16:49:01

buttons wrote:

Would I run it on my home computer? I do also have a side-by-side installation of ubuntu, but only because ubuntu tends to come with extremely usable pre-configured configuration files in their packages. If I need ideas for arch, or just want to know how ubuntu managed to get some behaviour I really like, I'll have a trawl through its /etc directory to see what they did...

this was what i was getting at with the comment about using xorg.conf from ubuntu earlier.

Arch Linux

#26 2007-10-26 07:40:54

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#27 2007-10-26 09:01:04

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#28 2007-10-26 17:03:13

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#29 2007-10-26 19:07:51

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#30 2007-10-26 19:13:19

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#31 2007-11-04 19:10:53

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#32 2007-11-04 20:31:41

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#33 2007-11-04 21:08:15

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#34 2007-11-05 00:54:38

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#35 2007-11-15 16:26:12

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#36 2007-11-15 16:56:24

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#37 2007-11-18 06:21:44

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#38 2007-11-18 08:00:33

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#39 2007-11-18 15:25:01

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#40 2007-11-18 21:53:39

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#41 2007-11-18 22:59:02

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#42 2007-11-19 13:32:53

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#43 2007-11-21 14:40:29

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#44 2007-11-21 17:51:37

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#45 2007-11-22 22:14:45

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#46 2007-11-22 22:31:49

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#47 2007-11-23 05:25:35

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#48 2007-11-23 15:05:23

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#49 2007-11-23 15:19:14

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

#50 2007-11-23 16:49:01

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 -- Gutsy Gibbon

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