Ubuntu 7.04, you can be happy too

[greylica]

Last week I have installed Kubuntu 7.04 in my system, froma fresh Install. and I can say that distro is getting close to nirvana. JFS simple and easy, only two bugs found and fastly corrected by the Canonical team, easy access to all of the things I need to work, starts with 123 MB !
YES !
Only 123MB of Ram used at startup !
The system services well tuned and Kubuntu flyes !
No one jitter, a bunch of renderizations in my machine and the machine is still usable to model in Blender ! Incredible !
Canonical, accept my gratitude, and when possible, a donation too.

The only chastise to install that is always the same is the Nvidia drivers or the ATI drivers with some crap wi-fi cards, I still don't know why Nvidia and ATI still didn't open their drivers to the community, Intel opened their drivers and there is no harm done, INtel drivers installs automatically and OpenGl is ready for Linux right after the installation.

Debian/Ubuntu are great softwares !

 

[Seeruk]

It's still a lottery.

I am delighted by the debian install I use at the moment on a desktop machine - everything very nice and very stable without much effort on my half. Just how a distro should be.

At the same time I was horrified at the amount of hacking I have done consuming HOOUUUURRRSSSSSSSS on an ubuntu build on a laptop. Getting it to work on external VGA through a docking station, getting suspend to work, getting the keyboard to work, getting the extra buttons like FN+F8 to work (still no success on that), finding the 7 and counting places I have to enter proxy details (synaptic is bugged beyond belief when it comes to ISA proxies), getting the sound to work, still battling with super slow browsing despite disabling IPV6 totally as well as within firefox, battery time is a pitiful 1 hour 10 minutes compared to 3-4 hours on XP..... I'm running out of typing breath

SUSE was better on that laptop, but had one huge instability in Open Office (while a document is open you cant do anything in any other window or use the gnome panels!) I and the help of 4 colleagues couldnt get rid of in over 4 weeks.... it had to go!

Morale of the story... why is there always something wrong with every major distro!! Always something, but usually hopping around a few distros you can find one that works 99% of the time

 

[Nothinman]

Morale of the story... why is there always something wrong with every major distro!! Always something, but usually hopping around a few distros you can find one that works 99% of the time

Because they can't test everything and the hardware manufacturers still don't test Linux on their hardware. Your laptop problems with Ubuntu are a little strange but things like docking VGA, suspend, extra buttons, etc are very hit and miss since different laptops do different things. Sometimes you get lucky and the extra keys just generate standard keycodes that you can map to things and the docking magic happens in hardware so the OS doesn't actually see it but sometimes they don't. Proxy settings are a little more work but I can only think of like 3 places you might have to enter it since most people either use Gnome, KDE and console apps so once in each environment and you should be good.

Now that Dell's shipping Ubuntu on a laptop or two things should get better and Intel's putting a pretty big effort behind power management. Their recent release of PowerTop has brought a lot of attention on what's really eating power on Linux.

But frankly no matter how much hassle it is I'd rather spend HOOUUUURRRSSSSSSSS getting Linux working right on my laptop than run Windows. =)

 

[gcy]

I just installed Ubuntu on my desktop and it worked with no problem. It has been very stable. I'm getting a bigger HD and and dual boot on my laptop, have tried live CD and everything worked.
This the first time I have tried any of the major distro, and it is very easy to work with.

 

[HannibalX]

Errr my WinXP SP2 boxes idle with less ram usage then that...

 

[silverpig]

But you kind of WANT a lot of ram usage. More stuff in memory = faster system. Who buys 2 GB of ram only to whittle their OS down to using only 256 MB and then hit the swap like mad?

 

[Nothinman]

Errr my WinXP SP2 boxes idle with less ram usage then that...

It's an impossible comparison since the UI is handled so differently between the OSes and I don't get the fascination with free memory anyway. Sure it's nice to make sure you have enough memory to handle your working set but free memory is wasted so if it's not at least in use by the filesystem cache you should get your money back.

 

[hasu]

Is there a player or plug in for divx playback for Firefox on Linux Mint (an Ubuntu derivative)?

 

[skwicz212]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Now that Dell's shipping Ubuntu on a laptop or two things

Is the wireless driver native in Dell PC? Does DVD play out of the box?

 

[Nothinman]

Is the wireless driver native in Dell PC? Does DVD play out of the box?

I believe they're using Intel for all of their wifi on the Linux boxes so yes and no, I doubt it plays DVDs out of the box.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Errr my WinXP SP2 boxes idle with less ram usage then that...

It's an impossible comparison since the UI is handled so differently between the OSes and I don't get the fascination with free memory anyway. Sure it's nice to make sure you have enough memory to handle your working set but free memory is wasted so if it's not at least in use by the filesystem cache you should get your money back.

Ya. Memory usage is tricky in Linux.

To get a more-or-less accurate overview of your system you have to use the 'free' command and compare system buffers and file system cache to full memory usage.

For example on my router I use Debian stable. If you look at memory usage you'll see that it's using up all 128 megs of ram, plus 13 megs of swap partition. But if you use 'free' you'll see that all of it is file system cache, the actual active ram usage is 21 megs..

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: hasu
Is there a player or plug in for divx playback for Firefox on Linux Mint (an Ubuntu derivative)?

if you have vlc or mplayer installed then you should have everything you need for 90% of the playback you need.

ffmpeg project has a very very nice multi-codec (also known as libavcodec) that handles all sorts of different things like divx, xvid, wmv (most types), h.263, etc etc.

Newer versions can even playback *.flv files like you get from Youtube. (look for a package called youtube-dl for a command line youtube video grabber)

The default player for Gnome is 'Totem'. Totem, shall we say, tends to ride the short bus for media players. In other words it's rather limited.

Most people would be very satisfied with VLC even though the GUI doesn't mesh well with the rest of Gnome. It does work.

Real media junkies should check out mplayer. It's very advanced. So advanced that it makes me want to jab stuff into my brain to make it stop so I can go back to normal players.

In fact VLC, mplayer, and ffmpeg stuff is realy one of the best combination of codecs and media players you can find in pretty much any OS.

For stuff that ffmpeg whatnot can't handle you can probably find w32-codecs or win32codecs (various different names) that are windows originated codecs that are used to play the more proprietary codecs. Not as nice as natively supported stuff and it won't work with 64bit software.

 

[Alone]

I use MPlayer most of the time, but sometimes VLC plays things mplayer can't. I especially like MPlayer because I can stretch the video across two monitors and have no controls or borders.

 

[gcy]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Is the wireless driver native in Dell PC? Does DVD play out of the box?

I believe they're using Intel for all of their wifi on the Linux boxes so yes and no, I doubt it plays DVDs out of the box.

I tried Ubuntu Live CD on Laptop with intel centrino M750 and everything works, wireless was easy to configue and DVD played with Totem Movie Player 2.18.1

 

[hasu]

My vlc player works better now.. Thanks guys!! I should have checked "synaptic" first

 

[Nothinman]

I tried Ubuntu Live CD on Laptop with intel centrino M750 and everything works, wireless was easy to configue and DVD played with Totem Movie Player 2.18.1

Are you sure the DVD was encrypted? AFAIK libdvdcss isn't in any of Ubuntu's repos.

 

[gcy]

I just checked and you're right it played an unencrypted DVD, but will not play an encrypted one.

 

[greylica]

Originally posted by: Pale Rider
Errr my WinXP SP2 boxes idle with less ram usage then that...

Yes, everybody can achieve this too, without anti-virus, without second VGA, without messenger, without effects, without some services running, without Themes, without 4 desktops, without media player running....

In Fact, Win XP SP2 runs very well with only 80MB of Ram if you turn off half of the software services...

In Linux, with 123Mb of Ram, we can run 2 monitors, 4 desktops, Gaim, amarok, and superkaramba to monitor the system, without turning off the entire GUI of the system.

Originally posted by: Seeruk
It's still a lottery.

Yes, you are right, for some systems, some distros are not well tuned, then a bunch of problems occur. In general, this is not happening to me because I only buy Compatible Linux hardware for my computers, Some vendors are out of my computers because they don't have open drivers or compatibility with Linux. I am always reading the HCL of my distros.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Errr my WinXP SP2 boxes idle with less ram usage then that...

It's an impossible comparison since the UI is handled so differently between the OSes and I don't get the fascination with free memory anyway. Sure it's nice to make sure you have enough memory to handle your working set but free memory is wasted so if it's not at least in use by the filesystem cache you should get your money back.

No kidding. I have 2GB on ALL my machines, which are both my laptops (Dell iXPS2 and Macbook), as well as my HTPC.

And memory is so ridiculously cheap now, i can't see why ANYBODY would complain.

At least for home users. I can understand it if you're running virtualization or something, but then again, i doubt most people would even use a full fledged GUI for that.

Anyways Fiesty has been fantastic. Just make sure that when you install it, you're online, because often drivers needs to be downloaded from the repositories (they're not allowed to ship some of them, but they can have them in their repositories for automatic download during the installation).

Still, it can be a pain. I'm glad i know enough about kubuntu to do certain things. For instance, i recently installed Pidgin (new GAIM) on my box... and man, i had to compile it for kubuntu, and almost nothing was installed on installation, so i had to install a C++ compiler, dev tools for perl and GTK2++, and a whackload of other stuff to get it to compile.

It's getting there though... real close. Beryl is fantastically easy now. I remember first intsalling Beryl like 2 years ago, and what a PITA that was. Literally took hours. With Feisty, it took less than 2 mins! I don't even know why they don't make it the default GUI now, they have it down pat.

And what's with Firefox still not being bundled with it? Firefox has been teaming up with everybody, whether it's Google, ebay, etc... but they haven't gotten together with Ubuntu?

Anyways, it's moving along much faster than i anticipated... and i think within 2 years, it could easily replace Windows for the vast majority of users (who simply use a computer to go online, emails, word processing, etc).

 

[Nothinman]

At least for home users. I can understand it if you're running virtualization or something, but then again, i doubt most people would even use a full fledged GUI for that.

I use a full fledged GUI for that because usually I'm using it to run Windows for one reason or another. Luckily it only comes up extremely rarely though.

Still, it can be a pain. I'm glad i know enough about kubuntu to do certain things. For instance, i recently installed Pidgin (new GAIM) on my box... and man, i had to compile it for kubuntu, and almost nothing was installed on installation, so i had to install a C++ compiler, dev tools for perl and GTK2++, and a whackload of other stuff to get it to compile.

Which is why you should have just waited for them to package it.

It's getting there though... real close. Beryl is fantastically easy now. I remember first intsalling Beryl like 2 years ago, and what a PITA that was. Literally took hours. With Feisty, it took less than 2 mins! I don't even know why they don't make it the default GUI now, they have it down pat.

Um, Beryl's only existed since Sept '06...

And what's with Firefox still not being bundled with it? Firefox has been teaming up with everybody, whether it's Google, ebay, etc... but they haven't gotten together with Ubuntu?

Ubuntu does indeed ship FF.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Still, it can be a pain. I'm glad i know enough about kubuntu to do certain things. For instance, i recently installed Pidgin (new GAIM) on my box... and man, i had to compile it for kubuntu, and almost nothing was installed on installation, so i had to install a C++ compiler, dev tools for perl and GTK2++, and a whackload of other stuff to get it to compile.

Which is why you should have just waited for them to package it.

Um yeah, i'd rather not. There are the people that wait for others to do things, and then there are the people who take it upon themselves (especially since it wasn't an especially difficult task... i was just pointing out that if you're going to play with the latest and great things, you still need to work at it).

Um, Beryl's only existed since Sept '06...

That could be true. It seems a lot longer though. Nonetheless, the first Beryl/Compiz installation was a PITA.

Ubuntu does indeed ship FF.

I didn't notice that, and could have sworn that was one of the first thing i did was to replace Konquorer with FF.

 

[Nothinman]

Um yeah, i'd rather not. There are the people that wait for others to do things, and then there are the people who take it upon themselves (especially since it wasn't an especially difficult task... i was just pointing out that if you're going to play with the latest and great things, you still need to work at it).

Depends on what you decide to run, pidgin's been in Debian sid for a number of weeks now.

I didn't notice that, and could have sworn that was one of the first thing i did was to replace Konquorer with FF.

Well you did say that you're running Kubuntu so maybe they don't ship it, sadly they don't have a packages.kubuntu.org host like Debian and Ubuntu so I can't check easily.

 

[Alone]

Gnome based cd's have always shipped with Firefox.

 

[Seeruk]

Update: (and a moan of course )

Why o why o why o..... (i think you get the idea)

...... does ubuntu not fix slow browsing in Firefox. The problem has been around in every release since the dawn of man and still its abiatch.

IPV6 disabled in FF and the system as a whole (we are IPV4 here only)
All kinds of funky configs tried from ubuntu forums
Installed a local DNS cache
and more....

The best result from any of these is that you get faster browsing for about 10 minutes before it returns to treacle slow. Debian doesnt have this issue so what giant turd do the Ubuntu folks dump in that screws it up so much!

Then for kicks I installed XP in a VM with ubuntu as the host, installed FF into the VM and its as fast as lightening!!

I think ICA proxies compound the issue, trying to figure out where. But I have plenty of other distros running around me, all with Firefox installed and running at normal speeds going through the very same proxy.

 

[HannibalX]

Sorry guys, I call horse ******.

This was the initial claim by the OP

<<<Only 123MB of Ram used at startup !>>>

If you are going to tout that obviously you are proud of it, and my XP boxes can do the same thing at startup/idle.



Apparently it's only a big deal when mentioned with Linux - but when I mention it with XP people say "why would you care? Free memory is wasted memory!".

You can't have it both ways. If it's an accomplishment for one, it's an accomplishment for both.