Thoughts on Ubuntu
at around evening time on Thursday, the 29th of May 2008 by Chad
Running the latest greatest Ubuntu Linux distro (Hardy Heron, can’t wait for Randy Rhino) on a spare desktop. Here’s a few random thoughts as I work with it…
- 2 package managers? Add/Remove under applications menu is nice, but needing the Synaptic Package Manager also?
- Open source folks like to bust on MS for having to patch all the time. Every few days I’m installing 20-30 patches THAT REQUIRE A REBOOT on Ubuntu.
- Why the hell is it so hard to get a 5 year old Linksys wireless card working properly in a laptop? I have the perfect laptop for it, and finally gave up because while it makes you think wireless is working but just not finding any networks, it hasn’t even begun to work. Of course the instructions say “connect to the network and download…”
- Doing the basics seems to be pretty straight forward for most things. That it installs easily (although I think parts of the OpenSuSE install is prettier) is a big bonus.
- Email is there and easy. So is web browsing. OpenOffice is much nicer than it used to be and doesn’t need excuses made for it anymore. Most everything else just works.
Worth checking out though if you have a spare partition on your current system or a spare PC. Right now Ubuntu doesn’t play nice with Virtual PC 2005 (free from Microsoft) unfortunately or I’d recommend that. You can try Wubi which is pretty slick, runs Ubuntu just like an application in Windows for you.
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May 30th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Well, I was able to get the wireless running. The process? Easy. Documentation? HORRIBLE. About 30 different forum posts that had the correct answers (sorta) but written by third graders. Most started out with instructions for installing your wireless network card (often your sole internet access) by saying connect your workstation to the internet…
Not a single one even had instructions for downloading the necessary files on another system and copying them over.
June 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Re: package managers: you forgot apt and aptitude, both command-line tools. All four have their strengths and weaknesses. I prefer Synaptic, myself.
Please post your howto on Ubuntu Forums. The community needs people like you, who are good tech writers.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:36 am
New OpenSuSE 11 is out… gonna try to review that here shortly.