Ubuntu

ruwach · 2004-12-20 06:39:58

You know, i have been running Arch for about 6 or 7 months now, but i like to tinker, no bloat, and tweak. i also dig watching code compile But i never had a problem with Debian. I have a friend who was just given a 533mhz Celeron with a fried hard disk so i put Debian on it for him just for simplicity. i like debians sarge net installer. really about as simple as it gets outside of a gui. The installer is much simpler than Archs but once you have Arch the way you like it, you dont need to mess with it much.

punkrockguy318 · 2004-12-21 21:30:05

UPDATE: Hey, looks like my needs have changed again. Now, I am the only person using this PC and don't need to make sure stuff works for other people. I had another user using this PC, and it was important that it was stable. GnuCash was needed, and It was important that it was always available. But now, I'm the only one. If something breaks, I can deal with it. I'm not going to be uninstalling Arch, and I'm gonna stick around Don't take me off the TUR list yet!

xerxes2 · 2004-12-21 22:13:54

good you're back punky,

wasn't you leaving twice now, i think i remember a while back that you were trying something else,

link · 2004-12-22 01:44:20

You're almost as fickle as I am. We're all on the ever-going quest to find the perfect Linux distribution to fit our needs. I'm putting together a small file-server for my home network to run in my DMZ, but the CPU is a SPARC I got from work. Too bad there's no SPARC port of Arch Linux. And no, I couldn't make one with this box. Its an Ultra 10, 400MHz CPU with about 512MB of RAM. I guess I could try though.

LB06 · 2004-12-26 01:09:39

I really like Ubuntu, too. In some sense it is very similar to Arch. It can be very bleeding edge if you run Hoary (Gnome 2.9.3) (Warty is pretty up2date too).

Arch and Ubuntu can also be seen as complete opposites, however. These are some observations I have made regarding the difference between Arch and Ubuntu.

- Arch wants to provide stock packages, while Ubuntu patches almost everything in their main repository.

- Arch (Judd, at least) does not really seem to care about having nonfree packages in the repos, Ubuntu does.

- Arch is not as integrated as Ubuntu is. For example, if you install a kernel package, a grub entry will automatically be added to menu,lst if you have grub installed. Don't know about lilo, though.

- Arch is more powerful than Ubuntu, meaning you can tweak things more easily without causing problems.

- In Ubuntu you will have to tweak hell of a lot less.

- Ubuntu has more resources and possibly more followers. Ubuntu (Cannonical) offers commercial support.

- Arch provides every package that is available on earth, while Ubuntu only provides a carefully selected set of packages in their main repo (the HUGE debian repo is also available, but is of course not supported).

- Arch has better init scripts.

- Arch boots faster (but Ubuntu seems just as responsive (both with stock-i686 kernels and NPTL enabled libc6)

- Ubuntu is geared more toward newcomers (decide for yourself whether this is an advantage or not). Ubuntu has superb hardware detection (X, dri, sound, dma, speedstep, burner, project utopia etc working right out of the box). Nonfree packages weren't working out of the box, because they weren't installed.

- Ubuntu is more suitable for non broadband users, because they send you Ubuntu CD's free of charge. Besides that, their main release is not a moving target. I know Arch also has a stable release, but I highly doubt anyone is using it.

- Ubuntu uses sudo instead of a real root account.

- Ubuntu is better than MDK, Fedora, SuSE (so is Arch).

- Ubuntu is better than Debian for a desktop (so is Arch).

Bottom line: I ended up installing Ubuntu next to my Arch install over my windows install. I just couldn't decide. Guess I'll have to get a glass of wine. (I switch distro's very often. I have used 7 different distro's over the past 4 years (MDK, Debian, Slackware, Arch, Ubuntu, SuSE, Gentoo)

dtw · 2004-12-26 08:09:39

i would like to say that i will never use Ubuntu because i think the name is crap - there are much better sounding words in african dialects that mean the same thing - and seeing as ubuntu DOES seem to be all about appearances they struck out there with me!

LB06 · 2004-12-26 18:59:44

Geez, I don't get why so many people look no futher than a name and some artwork. There've already been a zillion discussions about these matters. How pathetic.

scottro · 2004-12-27 00:23:22

I recommended Ubuntu to a friend without trying it. He likes Deb but wanted one distro that Just Works(TM).

He liked it, but I wound up using Mepis for my Just Works(TM) distro. In this Just Works means
I don't feel like tweaking, searching and working at this--I want to put in a DVD and watch it, click on a trailer on upn com and have realplayer play it, etc.

I keep trying the desktop oriented distros and so far, Mepis is probably the best. However, I usually only boot into such a distro about once a month, if I want to watch a DVD and my wife has the TV.

The downside of a Just Works distro is the bloat. I've trimmed out a few things, but again, it's not an often used or production box, and I don't want to spend hours on it--that's the whole
idea of the Just Works.

Ironically enough I've used Arch long enough so that, with the exception of realplayer, (and now that Buffy and Angel are both gone, I hardly watch trailers anyway) it probably takes me less time and effort to set up than Mepis et al....but for example, I'd give Mepis to my father to play with, I wouldn't give him Arch.

punkrockguy318 · 2004-12-27 00:44:47

scottro wrote:

I recommended Ubuntu to a friend without trying it. He likes Deb but wanted one distro that Just Works(TM).
He liked it, but I wound up using Mepis for my Just Works(TM) distro. In this Just Works means
I don't feel like tweaking, searching and working at this--I want to put in a DVD and watch it, click on a trailer on upn com and have realplayer play it, etc.

I keep trying the desktop oriented distros and so far, Mepis is probably the best. However, I usually only boot into such a distro about once a month, if I want to watch a DVD and my wife has the TV.
The downside of a Just Works distro is the bloat. I've trimmed out a few things, but again, it's not an often used or production box, and I don't want to spend hours on it--that's the whole
idea of the Just Works.
Ironically enough I've used Arch long enough so that, with the exception of realplayer, (and now that Buffy and Angel are both gone, I hardly watch trailers anyway) it probably takes me less time and effort to set up than Mepis et al....but for example, I'd give Mepis to my father to play with, I wouldn't give him Arch.

One thing that's nice about Ubuntu: There's not much bloat. It gives you what you need. The only application that was installed that I didn't want was XSANE, because I don't use my scanner. Everything else is great

The only thing that doesn't Just Work in Ubuntu is nonfree stuff. That's a pain to get working. The Ubuntu Java Wiki will set you up with java, but I don't see why they can't just put it in there nonfree (multiverse) repo. Mp3 support and divx support is also discouraged... But that's okay, I use theora and oggs, so I'm good.

dtw · 2004-12-29 11:40:52

Geez, I don't get why so many people look no futher than a name and some artwork. There've already been a zillion discussions about these matters. How pathetic.

- well there are worse things to be petty about i suppose

Forse · 2005-01-19 02:23:14

My expirience with Ubuntu was odd as it didn't detect my graphic card and after adding unofficial sources to aptget I still couldn't install mplayer as it had missing deps which couldn't be downloaded via apt-get. I don't mind compiling, but why bother compiling when you have binary distro...

Also I think ubuntu only officially supports gnome which I dislike (long live xfce4), but all those things are not really issues, but they surely didn't improve usability.

I think bashing Ubutu is childish as this is what *nix is all about...choices

Spirit7609 · 2005-04-25 09:21:14

I set up my new box yesterday.. I had Gentoo on it before and it was just bloated and I didn't like it anymore. As my other box runs on Arch since last year, I thought about it and installed from a 0.6 CD.
I really have been impatient yesterday, so I immediately took it off again when I could not get alsa working for 2 hours. :-)

Then I installed Ubuntu. First impression was really nice - until I've tried to install a new package. Of course I tried to su and run synaptic, but then I remembered "hey, did it ask me for a root passwd - no it didn't!". I was confused. :-)

So I read the doc again and found that Ubuntu uses sudo for all tasks. I tried it and it first felt convenient enough and such. But then it just didn't feel right. Also, I have made backups with 7zip and there is no working package for Ubuntu (remember I was lazy yesterday *g*). Now all my machines run Arch. :-)

What do you think of the no-root/sudo approach? Do you think it's a good idea?

Cheers,
Daniel

neri · 2005-04-25 11:48:14

Spirit7609 wrote:

What do you think of the no-root/sudo approach? Do you think it's a good idea?

Well, it has it up and down sides
upside: you can't be logged in as root accidentally (like have forgotten that this console is root and do stupid things)
downside: for larger administration tasks typing sudo over and over again can become annoying

my guess it's somewhat newbie proof which also effects users that just use the box instead of deailing with - like the Mac users, for example - MAC OSX uses a similar approach iirc

-neri

jesus franco · 2005-05-17 16:17:49

I prefer arch. Fedora was my first distro and then i switched to Ubuntu. I have used Ubuntu for over a year. I switched to Arch because a friend of mine recomended it to me. Arch is faster on my pc simply because it is just what you want and nothing more. Ubuntu installs some stuff on the system that you might not want are have to manually remove it. None the less it is a great distro and it is comming along great.

I think Ubuntu is helping Debian stay alive. Most of thier packages are extremely old. And ubuntu is more modern. But i find that it boots slower and is slower than Archlinux. It is however faster than Fedora.

Arch has newer packages and they are released before Ubuntu has them.

Its a good distro but ArchLinux is for me

Moo-Crumpus · 2005-05-17 16:52:07

Ubuntu is slower, as its kernel is compiled very conservative. It runs with a ram limit (heared about 256 MB ram), and is i386 "optimated". Install a better kernel.

iom · 2005-05-17 17:04:20

Pink Chick wrote:

It runs with a ram limit (heared about 256 MB ram), and is i386 "optimated". Install a better kernel.

i don't know about ram limit, but packages are all compiled using -march=i386 -mtune=pentium4.
edit:
i was using ubuntu for quite a while and it definitely is slower compared to arch [although they claim there is no difference at all...]

darkcoder · 2005-05-17 17:34:17

Pink Chick wrote:

Ubuntu is slower, as its kernel is compiled very conservative. It runs with a ram limit (heared about 256 MB ram), and is i386 "optimated". Install a better kernel.

Dunno about the memory limit, but definitely Ubuntu fells slower. Had for a while both Ubuntu Hoary and Arch on my laptop. And even with the 686 Kernel and libc, movie playback was slower (skippy).

blitze · 2005-06-02 02:10:31

Arch is a regular rocket ship of a distro, lean mean and fast. What I do like of Ubuntu is the hardware detection and installation. Very easy and very good, or at least my experience of has been.

Still here with Arch although I am pissed at gstreamer people for their plugins fiasco they have released recently. Luckily Mplayer fills my video needs and I can stream internet radio through it. Might end up ripping gstreamer out of my system if they don't get their issues delt with soon.

iBertus · 2005-06-02 04:15:01

One thing I find is that Arch runs well on any 686-type chip but on modern hardware it's faster than anything else I've tried. It boots almost as fast as Windows XP and is less laggy and bloated. I'm running a mid-range Athlon setup and it rocks. Using reiser4 programs start faster than on Windows and filesystem operations are much faster.

dtw · 2005-06-02 04:54:12

Define the time that it takes for windows to boot

jerem · 2005-06-02 09:44:27

Windows XP (not previous versions) does not load all drivers at bootup. It loads them when needed.

It also writes to the disc the configuration it found last time, so that helps much.

And also know that there are small utilities to make windows processes load in parallel.

Moo-Crumpus · 2005-06-02 19:35:10

Ubuntu boots faster then arch, on my maschine. Schocked.

Moo-Crumpus · 2005-06-24 09:39:10

The more I am playing around with ubuntu, the more I am impressed by it's continuous logic and clean folder structures. Very attractive.

iphitus · 2005-06-24 10:26:04

Pink Chick wrote:

The more I am playing around with ubuntu, the more I am impressed by it's continuous logic and clean folder structures. Very attractive.

Heh, ditto, installed it earlier this week, it's clean, works good and with no fuss.

And it boots in the same time as my arch install, but with more stuff running at boot. Go figure lol.

iphitus

stonecrest · 2005-06-26 23:36:25

I just got done with a stint of using Ubuntu for a few weeks because I got frustrated with Arch. Well, I'm back Anyway, Arch boots much faster than Ubuntu for me, I'm surprised others have seen the opposite. I'm talking probably a factor of 2 here.

Ubuntu definitely had things going for it (number of packages, large community, never ran into any problems, etc.), but at the end of the day I missed the speed (i686) and elegance of Arch. Just opening the xfce menu on Arch compared with other distros made the speed difference obvious - in most distros, I would see the menu briefly with no icons before they loaded. In Arch, the icons are already there when the menu becomes visible. Launching programs like Firefox is visibly much faster too.

I'll probably keep my eye on Ubuntu.. but unless they start making i686 packages (I used the i686 kernel, didn't see any improvement), I'll be sticking with Arch.

I have to say that the one area where Ubuntu needs improvement, and granted it's probably because of its basis in debian, is in packages. The huge number of related packages just to download something makes things very confusing. In Arch, pacman -S kernel26, for example. In Ubuntu, there's a linux-image, linux-header, linux-modules, and then a package that downloads all three. It's just very convoluted, I'm surprised that a distro that prides itself on being user-friendly continues to go this path.

Arch Linux

#26 2004-12-20 06:39:58

Re: Ubuntu

#27 2004-12-21 21:30:05

Re: Ubuntu

#28 2004-12-21 22:13:54

Re: Ubuntu

#29 2004-12-22 01:44:20

Re: Ubuntu

#30 2004-12-26 01:09:39

Re: Ubuntu

#31 2004-12-26 08:09:39

Re: Ubuntu

#32 2004-12-26 18:59:44

Re: Ubuntu

#33 2004-12-27 00:23:22

Re: Ubuntu

#34 2004-12-27 00:44:47

Re: Ubuntu

#35 2004-12-29 11:40:52

Re: Ubuntu

#36 2005-01-19 02:23:14

Re: Ubuntu

#37 2005-04-25 09:21:14

Re: Ubuntu

#38 2005-04-25 11:48:14

Re: Ubuntu

#39 2005-05-17 16:17:49

Re: Ubuntu

#40 2005-05-17 16:52:07

Re: Ubuntu

#41 2005-05-17 17:04:20

Re: Ubuntu

#42 2005-05-17 17:34:17

Re: Ubuntu

#43 2005-06-02 02:10:31

Re: Ubuntu

#44 2005-06-02 04:15:01

Re: Ubuntu

#45 2005-06-02 04:54:12

Re: Ubuntu

#46 2005-06-02 09:44:27

Re: Ubuntu

#47 2005-06-02 19:35:10

Re: Ubuntu

#48 2005-06-24 09:39:10

Re: Ubuntu

#49 2005-06-24 10:26:04

Re: Ubuntu

#50 2005-06-26 23:36:25

Re: Ubuntu

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