Ubuntu, why it is crap

[PrettyBoyTim]

The one time something really evil got onto my computer was on Linux. I'd become a bit slack on the security updates and it got rooted and was sending out bucketloads of spam.

It was about that time I decided that running my own mail server was actually more hassle than it was worth and delegated the job to Google.

[simonp]

Me, personally, only ever been hacked on Windows.  MSBlast; the firewall SW I was using had left that port open, and time from boot to reinfection (and subsequent crash) was about 30s.  Really hard work getting the updates downloaded. 

[fred the great]

I have had one or two viruses. Not because I was looking at naughty Sites as Ian may think.

I received an e-mail from my deceased friend's wife with an attachment which was just very suspicious. I emailed her separately to check if she really had sent it. She replied "Sorry my address book has been invaded and my friend is sorting it out. Please delete it or else"

I also received a floppy from our Vietnamese Office which also contained a virus and an email from our Kong Kong Office with attachment and another virus.

Fortunately, I had suitable defences but one can never be 100% sure with Microshaft

This what I like about Ubuntu who state categorically that a virus programme is not needed. I presume they speak the truth?

[Greenbank]

This what I like about Ubuntu who state categorically that a virus programme is not needed. I presume they speak the truth?

No they don't, well not sort of. Linux viruses exist, they are just less common than on Windows. But that doesn't mean that I'd "state categorically" that you don't need one.

Linux malware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anti-virus applications on Linux are mainly aimed at fileservers where the AV software can be used to detect and clean files that have been stored on the machine from Windows boxes.

But I don't think it'll be more than 2 years before AV software is recommended for Linux desktops.

[fred the great]

You are probably correct for the future but for the moment I feel very comfortable without Microshaft as it has far too many holes these days

[TimC]

Resurrecting an old thread: I've just installed Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) 64-bit as a dual-boot on my Dell Studio XPS 1340 laptop. It hasn't been a total success; I've got NVidia graphics drivers to allow the use of Unity, but no Flash, Java, or other codecs to allow video playback. I tried to get Google Earth 6 installed, but failed miserably - even after extensive searches to secure a bit of help.

Overall - as I think MV said earlier, it needs to just work. It doesn't, at least in this iteration. I happened to have a day to waste trying to get it up and running. The relief on returning to Win7 Pro was quite surprising, given my high hopes at the beginning of the procedure!

[Simonb]

Resurrecting an old thread: I've just installed Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) 64-bit as a dual-boot on my Dell Studio XPS 1340 laptop. It hasn't been a total success; I've got NVidia graphics drivers to allow the use of Unity[...]

Unity is crap. Don't bother.

Stick with Gnome + Gnome-Do for the win!

[MikeFromLFE]

I've got an oldish laptop that was struggling with Windows, I put Ubuntu on it after the final crash, and didn't look back - almost everything 'just works' (everything important works, just the weird stuff that doesn't eg Logitech Harmony programming; Efergy energy monitor    )
I've updated it to Natty Narwhal (why the bl**dy stoopid named?) and I'm just a little teensy bit concerned - one machine death moment - possibly due to it overheating? My hardware doesn't support Unity (didn't expect it to - does it look like I'm bovvered?). The Screen brightness control behaves 'oddly'. And, I'm getting random blocking out of parts of the 'bar at the top of the screen thing'.
I wouldn't go back to using Windows full time, but I'm glad there's a Windows machine in the house for the weird stuff.

[Oaky]

"Clones are unstable."

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.

Oh - and Ubuntu crashes waaaay less often than Windows - and that's good enough for me.

I'm not a Code Weanie. I actually want to use my PC for useful stuff. Ubuntu is fine.

Veering waaay off-topic, but I've run Gentoo fro years now, and have had virtually no crashes. 

Never tried Ubuntu, but not feeling any strong urges to move away from Gentoo (it seems to be the only distro where I don't get dropped into dependency hell if I want to stay up to date and have some packages installed with newer versions than the distro's official versions and I therefore don't have to reinstall with the newest point version every year or so.  the downside being that I occasionally have to leave my box overnight compiling a bumper crop of releases (e.g.. new Xorg or Gnome version) and then spend a day working out why it doesn't work any more.  Usual reason is that I didn't read the news item that arrived with the update.  ).  In my Linux years, I've tried almost every distro (the only major exceptions being the various Debian-based distros which I guess Ubuntu may be realted to).

[Tewdric]

Resurrecting an old thread: I've just installed Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) 64-bit as a dual-boot on my Dell Studio XPS 1340 laptop. It hasn't been a total success; I've got NVidia graphics drivers to allow the use of Unity[...]

Unity is crap. Don't bother.

Stick with Gnome + Gnome-Do for the win!

I agree - they have slightly lost the plot offering a single version Unity front end for 11.04.  It's done with tablets and touch-screens in mind, no doubt, but I think they've forgotten who their user base are.  We have the capacity to make informed choices.

Ubuntu 10.04 is great and will be supported for a while, so no problems there.  Debain 6 has now had so much of the Ubuntu user-friendly dust sprinked over it that it's a viable alternative after that.

[woollypigs]

11.04 runs well on my Dell laptop. I never got on with Unity (tried out the beta for a while) and now I start up in Ubuntu Classic and love it.

[Phil]

Resurrecting an old thread: I've just installed Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) 64-bit as a dual-boot on my Dell Studio XPS 1340 laptop. It hasn't been a total success; I've got NVidia graphics drivers to allow the use of Unity, but no Flash, Java, or other codecs to allow video playback. I tried to get Google Earth 6 installed, but failed miserably - even after extensive searches to secure a bit of help.

That's a shame.  The last time I tangled with Ubuntu (for a colleague's machine) everything did Just Work, from the wifi to the graphics.  I'm a Fedora user personally, and couldn't be happier with it. 

On the offchance that you didn't already do all this:

To install Flash, download the 64-bit Linux link from here, extract it, and move the libflashplayer.so file to ~/.mozilla/plugins

To install Java, download the JRE from here and run the shell script in there (you'll need to run it as root IIRC). 

Skip installing specific codecs for Movieplayer and get VLC instead (available via apt-get). 

Oh also, if this is your first time using the NVidia drivers on Linux, be aware that every kernel update will mean you need to reinstall them.  Leave the installer file on your system. 

[Tewdric]

11.04 runs well on my Dell laptop. I never got on with Unity (tried out the beta for a while) and now I start up in Ubuntu Classic and love it.

Aha!  I'll try that..

[Andrew]

I removed Unity completely and log in to Classic because I use Cairo Dock. The 11.04 upgrade borked CD and I've still not got it working as I had it under 10 - something to do with compositing or some such.

Tbh, this is the first Ubuntu release were I've thought maybe it's time to look at another 'nix flavour.

[Tewdric]

Tbh, this is the first Ubuntu release were I've thought maybe it's time to look at another 'nix flavour.

I came to that conclusion too and I'm really a Linux newbie..

[TimC]

I had an underlying motive for trying it out - I'm thinking of loading Ubuntu onto an old XP-vintage laptop for my daughter to use at her mother's house, and I wanted a good look at how it works and what functionality is available for the things she's interested in - art, photography and chatting with her mates (as with any 14-year old)! I also wanted to see whether there were any parental controls or similar available, though that's not a deal-breaker.

My installation of the 64-bit version may have been part of the problem; it does seem that it's a little too under-developed and insufficiently well supported by drivers etc to be considered a finished product. No matter; I now have 32-bit 10.10 installed on another spare lappie that I can have a play with. I had kind of hoped that the dual-boot setup on the laptop that accompanies me everywhere would be the way ahead, but maybe not - I've just had to let Win7 do a boot repair to undo some of the mods that Ubuntu has instigated. I'm not prepared to compromise my access to Win7 for this experiment, so it'll have to be done in spare time at home (which is in short supply!).

[Tewdric]

You might find that running Win7 in a virtual machine under VMWare player is easier than dual-booting.  It's so easy even I can do it.

[Phil]

You won't have to mess with the boot loader again now you've done that.  It's a dual-boot problem rather than a linux one. 

[TimC]

Resurrecting an old thread: I've just installed Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) 64-bit as a dual-boot on my Dell Studio XPS 1340 laptop. It hasn't been a total success; I've got NVidia graphics drivers to allow the use of Unity, but no Flash, Java, or other codecs to allow video playback. I tried to get Google Earth 6 installed, but failed miserably - even after extensive searches to secure a bit of help.

That's a shame.  The last time I tangled with Ubuntu (for a colleague's machine) everything did Just Work, from the wifi to the graphics.  I'm a Fedora user personally, and couldn't be happier with it.  

On the offchance that you didn't already do all this:

To install Flash, download the 64-bit Linux link from here, extract it, and move the libflashplayer.so file to ~/.mozilla/plugins

To install Java, download the JRE from here and run the shell script in there (you'll need to run it as root IIRC).  

Skip installing specific codecs for Movieplayer and get VLC instead (available via apt-get).  

Oh also, if this is your first time using the NVidia drivers on Linux, be aware that every kernel update will mean you need to reinstall them.  Leave the installer file on your system.  

Thanks for the tips. But this isn't what I mean by 'it just works'! I remember doing all this crap in Dos and early Windows installations. Yes, I've got lazy - but I don't have time to waste on this. If I can find version that works, great, I'll give it a go. If not, I'll spend a few quid and get another Win7 lappie for her - and find a way of charging her mother!

[TimC]

You won't have to mess with the boot loader again now you've done that.  It's a dual-boot problem rather than a linux one. 

I've had to do it twice now.

[itsbruce]

the downside being that I occasionally have to leave my box overnight compiling a bumper crop of releases (e.g.. new Xorg or Gnome version) and then spend a day working out why it doesn't work any more.  

Whatever its virtues, Gentoo still doesn't handle the consequences of upgrades as well as it might.  There's a tendency (less than before, certainly) to break packages on upgrade, requiring post-upgrade tools or manual fixes.  That and the lack of an equivalent of Debian Stable means I'd not consider it for production use without a skilled team to create and maintain equivalent resources - and I'd need to be shown a compelling advantage before I'd see the point in expending the time on that.

In my Linux years, I've tried almost every distro (the only major exceptions being the various Debian-based distros which I guess Ubuntu may be realted to).

That's a significant omission, since it's one of the oldest lineages of Linux distributions and has the most mature package management system going - not that it's perfect and the Ubuntu development community has traded away some of those advantages and not alway shown the best judgement.  You should investigate a Debian-based derivative for a point of comparison, at least.  There's always something to learn from a different approach, even if only to tell you more about your favoured tools.  But in that case, you'd be better off investigating Debian.

[Simonb]

On the offchance that you didn't already do all this:

To install Flash, download the 64-bit Linux link from here, extract it, and move the libflashplayer.so file to ~/.mozilla/plugins

To install Java, download the JRE from here and run the shell script in there (you'll need to run it as root IIRC). 

Skip installing specific codecs for Movieplayer and get VLC instead (available via apt-get). 

Or simply install ubuntu-restricted-extras and sun-java6-bin

[Phil]

Nonfree software in an official repo? How ghastly!

[Simonb]

Nonfree software in an official repo? How ghastly!

<--- Not a purist ;-)

[pcolbeck]

11.04 has an option during install that if you choose it downloads and installs the most common non free stuff for you (flash, mp3 etc). A good idea for an OS amied at end users and the desktop.

I'm not convinced by the new UI though. I have been using it for a few days but am going to switch back to classic I think.