Ubuntu, why it is crap

[Valiant]

I have Mac and RHEL and Debian. In the odd instances I've preferred Knoppix over Ubuntu.

[Greenbank]

I wait 20 minutes for my work Windows XP laptop to stop hammering the hard disc after boot. 

That just sounds like all the programs that are run on startup, not necessarily part of XP itself. My XP laptop (much pruned down) starts up nice and quick because I've spent some time sorting it out. My desktop PC is insanely quick, but that's because it's a company wide standard image that has had lots of work on it to keep it fast, installing any other software on it is strongly discouraged (but not prohibited).

Check what you've got in:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RUn

and the same path under HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

It's the things like Google Desktop Search or Nokia PC Suite, Adobe Reader Speed Launcher, Quicktime players and other systray apps that waste so much time at start up, especially as they're started up concurrently which causes the contention for the disk (at least the service subsystem has some signalling for the process to say when it has started up and that Windows can move on to the next, without this it's just a free-for-all on the Run/RunOnce items).

(And linux is no better, the Linux rc system is just as arcane and complicated to understand given that it comes from ancient UNIX, its "registry" is just spread about in a hundreds of files in /etc formatted in different ways; some sourced, some parsed, etc).

I was a longtime MCC distrib (1.0. and Slackware user. Then Redhat. At work we support RHES and SuSE and, like Valiant, I'm much more likely to download Knoppix than I am Ubuntu.

[nuttycyclist]

I am in the same boat as many users.  I just want something that works out of the box, then possibly a bit of fetteling to customise.

For me that has always been Windows.  It installs on any hardware (sorting itself out for drivers etc) and keeps itself up to date via the internet.

I did tinkle with linux (Red Hat) but it was a real struggle to install, I couldn't get the appropriate drivers, and in the end I just gave up.

Ubuntu has been great.  It has installed and been as easy to use as windows.  Maybe it's now time to start lifting the bonnet and get tinkering.

[border-rider]

Ubuntu has been great.  It has installed and been as easy to use as windows. 

This is the key point, I guess.  I think that is the case now, more or less, but it wasn't really so even two or three years ago, and before Ubuntu managed it I don't think it could have been said of any Linux distros.

Linux's achilles heel is the lack of hardware support for some stuff.  If it's not available, you're stuffed.  Win can be just as much a PITA when an install doesn't go smoothly, and it's continual nagginess and obscurity about just what it's up to makes me dislike it, but at least the drivers exist for most extant hardware.

[Woofage]

Linux's achilles heel is the lack of hardware support for some stuff.  If it's not available, you're stuffed. 

Which, to be fair, is not the fault of the GNU/Linux operating system. If h/w vendors lack the imagination or foresight to release Linux drivers (or whatever is required to write one) then they are ignoring a growing and significant number of computer users.

[Greenbank]

Linux's achilles heel is the lack of hardware support for some stuff.  If it's not available, you're stuffed. 

Which, to be fair, is not the fault of the GNU/Linux operating system. If h/w vendors lack the imagination or foresight to release Linux drivers (or whatever is required to write one) then they are ignoring a growing and significant number of computer users.

The 80:20 rule in effect (for the hardware manufacturers).

80% of their revenue/sales will be covered by doing only 20% of the total driver development work.

(Note that I'm not saying that Linux represents the remaining 20% of the sales and 80% of the development costs, there are other x86 based Operating Systems, and a generic Linux driver should be relatively straightforward.)

[Gattopardo]

Been playing with fedora and found that Ubuntu was far easier just to set up and get running.


I dont know what I have done wrong with the fedora install.  But I'm currently downloading Mint and see what thats like.

Was going to continue with Fedora but it seems a real pain.  I may try re downloading it and creating yet another iso.

[Woofage]

The 80:20 rule in effect (for the hardware manufacturers).

80% of their revenue/sales will be covered by doing only 20% of the total driver development work.

(Note that I'm not saying that Linux represents the remaining 20% of the sales and 80% of the development costs, there are other x86 based Operating Systems, and a generic Linux driver should be relatively straightforward.)

Alternatively, h/w vendors could publish their specs and let the community create a driver.

[Greenbank]

Alternatively, h/w vendors could publish their specs and let the community create a driver.

Crowdsourcing (ugh I hate that term) leads to some horrible code, and support and maintenance difficulties in the future. Vendors are scared to release such things as "officially supported" and lots of people shy away from anything that doesn't have an official driver.

The old Linux model was to send Linus some free hardware (and a copy of the specs) and let him do it.

[fred the great]

Ubuntu is much the same with drivers. It found and installed one for my Printer.

As to hardware support perhaps MV will give some examples of types that are not supported.

For software alternatives Ubuntu has a web page or pages describing many software programmes that are available and equivalent to all  the Microshaft stuff.

Indeed the more one gets to know Ubuntu the more one appreciates the hard work that has been put into it.

And it's free

[simonp]

I wait 20 minutes for my work Windows XP laptop to stop hammering the hard disc after boot. 

That just sounds like all the programs that are run on startup, not necessarily part of XP itself. My XP laptop (much pruned down) starts up nice and quick because I've spent some time sorting it out. My desktop PC is insanely quick, but that's because it's a company wide standard image that has had lots of work on it to keep it fast, installing any other software on it is strongly discouraged (but not prohibited).

Check what you've got in:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RUn

and the same path under HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

It's the things like Google Desktop Search or Nokia PC Suite, Adobe Reader Speed Launcher, Quicktime players and other systray apps that waste so much time at start up, especially as they're started up concurrently which causes the contention for the disk (at least the service subsystem has some signalling for the process to say when it has started up and that Windows can move on to the next, without this it's just a free-for-all on the Run/RunOnce items).

There's very little of that stuff on the system.  It's fairly minimal, it's a glorified terminal and mail reader/web browser.  All my Real Work is done on the Linux systems.

The main culprit seems to be starting Outlook - which is particularly bad if done at startup (which I really need to do so I can check my email to see if anything urgent needs attending to).

We went through a whole process of optimisation a few weeks ago which improved matters a little.

[border-rider]

As to hardware support perhaps MV will give some examples of types that are not supported.

My graphics card on this machine (in 9.04).

The Hauppage TV tuners in our media PC

These are the two issues I have right now.

[rae]

Agere ET1310 Gigabit network cards
Any of the management utilities for Adaptec RAID controllers
1900x1600 on my old nVidia graphics card, that did it just fine in Windows...

....etc...

[vorsprung]

For the majority of people, Windows works fine and does everything they need to do.

This isn't my experience the damn thing is always breaking

[ian]

For the majority of people, Windows works fine and does everything they need to do.

This isn't my experience the damn thing is always breaking

Well, my anecdotal comparison of general crashy-ness is OSX < Linux < Windows (and yes, they all crash). So, nope, Windows XP doesn't come out well - but the crashes these days aren't the calamitous BSoDs of yore and usually recover themselves with a minor blip of sweariness. In other words, minor inconveniences. For most people, the convenience and familiarity of the Windows environment is worth the occasional burp.

My main gripe with Windows is the general bloaty, shouty slowness. Even with optimization, it takes longer than me to wake up in a morning. Even waking an XP machine from standby involves a minute or two of hard disk threshing. I have no idea what it is doing - I open the lid of my sleeping MacBook and it's there, including Wireless and VPN, effectively instantaneousy.

Ultimately though, any OS will let users do what they want unless they have specialized requirements. It comes down the convenience and familiarity (and occasionally cost). Ubuntu had come a long way to making Linux a bit friendlier (I know, it's for girls, proper men have beards, limited social skills and use Gentoo). I still think it's a got a way to go and some baggage to drop before it really presents an alternative to Johnny Average.

[aidan.f]

Well I'm johnny average+.     I always need a reason for doing something

After having an attempt at my credit card last week - partly my fault browsing with Windoze on a hotel network

(That's the only way I can think of how I got the click bot which read my card a few days later on a secure network)

I can now think of a V. good reason to use a dual boot Linux distro,

Windose for all the apps I can't run under Linux, & the Linux for doing 'unsafe things'

Before anyone says it, I could, and should have locked down Windows more & now know about bot's and  how to use Spybot search & destroy, but as I said I'm just johnny average+ plus a bit more now

[fred the great]

As I understand it you cannot lock down Microshaft? I have had one disasterous crash and my MD lost all his confidential Company files   Much swearing as you can imagine. And before some one says it, I always backed up to a thumb drive which was attached to the Computer. Unfortunately it had a safety feature which made the data inaccessible if the Computer crashed.

So it was time to move on to a Mac or Linux. The latter doesn't normally crash. And as I mentioned earlier Ubuntu has a page that lists all software that is equivalent to the  Microshaft stuff. Quicken was the only Programme that stumped me and eventually I changed to Linux software which does the job just as well.

Of course all OS's will crash if the disk space and memory are insufficient

[Greenbank]

Unfortunately it had a safety feature which made the data inaccessible if the Computer crashed.

I use thumb drives for transferring backups from one computer to another, or temporary storage for files that I'm working on in more than one place (and therefore I have two other older copies).

I'd never use a thumb drive as a backup device itself (for important files). If it's plugged in whilst the computer crashes then you could wave good bye to it.

[Oaky]

That's hilarious. I spent years playing with Gentoo. Custom built from the ground up to suit my hardware perfectly. Hmm... crashed more often than Ubuntu.

Gentoo is for geeks, compiling from source takes hours with no real advantage.   

I agreee that Gentoo is for geeks --- I use it myself  , but I'd say there was at least one advantage of the compile from source approach that it allows ... I am able to specify fairly bleeding edge versions of certain packages and upgrade nicely, without getting into the kind of dependency hell I used to battle when using .rpm based distros.  Uuntu/Debian is probably the only major distro branch I've never tried though, so that may be better for all I know...

In fact the above is not so much about the "compile from source" approach as it is about the portage system, which I do like a lot.  It's nice to have a wide range of choices of versions of packages, and some quite good handling of dependencies.

It's not perfect though -- I occasionally have to resort to googling and head-scratching when a particularly  baffling "Block" appears in the portage output, but on the whole it's nice and easy to keep up to date.

That said, I'm not sure if I'll use it on my next system or not.  I might give Suse another try, since I have a SLED DVD lying around at the moment.

[Greenbank]

Gentoo's problem is that people often try and compile everything with utterly insane optimisation and performance options (often at the suggestion of Gentoo's documentation or default options) which are prodding some of the weakest parts of gcc's code. The resulting assembly and binaries are shaky to say the least, falling foul of pipelines, concurrency and cache problems.

The optimisation options are ok for the odd bit of code but when everything on your machine (including the basic building blocks such as cat, vi, df, dd, ...) are built with them you're bound to run into some interesting problems.

It's called "Gentoo ricing".

[ian]

As I understand it you cannot lock down Microshaft? I have had one disasterous crash and my MD lost all his confidential Company files   Much swearing as you can imagine. And before some one says it, I always backed up to a thumb drive which was attached to the Computer. Unfortunately it had a safety feature which made the data inaccessible if the Computer crashed.

So it was time to move on to a Mac or Linux. The latter doesn't normally crash. And as I mentioned earlier Ubuntu has a page that lists all software that is equivalent to the  Microshaft stuff. Quicken was the only Programme that stumped me and eventually I changed to Linux software which does the job just as well.

Of course all OS's will crash if the disk space and memory are insufficient

All operating systems will crash (or at least something will crash them), regardless. It's how elegantly and unobtrusively they manage the process that matters. Linux variants certainly do crash. OSX crashes less often because it has a benefit of a locked down and known hardware configuration. Windows has become a lot better - most crashes now are application specific and don't require a reboot.

I am not sure how a disastrous crash can lose all documents, unless it's a disk failure, and those happen on any system. The only thing that really influences a hard disk failure is your diligence in backing up. Hard disks know if you've been slacking and will punish you hard.

As for security - I've been using Windows since 3.1 and have yet to get single virus or other malware. I feel a bit disappointed. Of course, running Windows without a firewall and antivirus is a bit risque. If you spend your days downloading cracked versions of PhotoShop CS from Russian warez sites and evenings browsing sites that promise Hot Teen Anal Action, then your mileage may vary, and you may end up with some interesting hard disk fauna.

And possibly an angry wife / girlfriend if you leave that browser history undisinfected.

[Greenbank]

I am not sure how a disastrous crash can lose all documents, unless it's a disk failure, and those happen on any system.

If you just yank the thumb drive out while the OS is writing to it then it could be left in a broken state, especially if the OS was rewriting the main directory tables at the time (as you'd just copied another file to it).

A machine crashing at the wrong moment could have very similar consequences.

This itself isn't Windows specific, it can happen to any OS, but it seems Windows has a habit of delaying writing to flash drives longer, and/or performing the updates in a different way, than other OSes increasing the window of opportunity.

This is why it's important to click on the "Safely Remove Hardware" systray icon (or eject/remove in the right click menu of the disk image) to unmount the thumb drive, and wait for it to say it is safe to remove it.

[ian]

This is why it's important to click on the "Safely Remove Hardware" systray icon (or eject/remove in the right click menu of the disk image) to unmount the thumb drive, and wait for it to say it is safe to remove it.

True enough, and my Mac shouts at me if remove a drive without ejecting it first. In a strange robot lady voice, which takes some explaining if I am on the phone at the time. Should possibly get around to turning that off. Almost no one properly unmounts drives from Windows though (it's not exactly made clear that you should). Yank n pray. Victoria would ensure some discipline amongst that fraternity.

I thought that most file systems these days - even NTFS - prevented those sorts of inadvertent shutdown-induced disasters, whereas thumb drives and the like are still typically FAT32 and lacking anything fancy.

[nuttycyclist]

...
As for security - I've been using Windows since 3.1 and have yet to get single virus or other malware. I feel a bit disappointed....

Same here.

[vorsprung]

I've been using Windows since 3.1 and have yet to get single virus or other malware. I feel a bit disappointed.

It's ok they are there, feeding your details to the russian mafia and using your PC as a spam relay.

Of course, running Windows without a firewall and antivirus is a bit risque.

It's ok if your PC isn't connected to any networks