Xanadb.com has a short post about trying out Ubuntu’s LiveCD on a 7-year-old Compaq laptop. Even three-year-old Compaqs are good for little more than paperweights so I was surprised to read that Ubuntu worked perfectly with all the hardware and even ran the PCMCIA wireless card (NetGear MA401) without a problem.
Score one more for Ubuntu being the distribution of choice for beginners. I feel so out of the loop that I don’t have it installed on anything yet.
Phil at PhilipandJenny.com did a review of the Kubuntu LiveCD. Considering the raves I’ve heard about Ubuntu and Kubuntu I was a little surprised at the outcome of his analysis, but I believe that his experience will be an invaluable guide for anyone giving this distribution consideration.
Phil runs a Sager 3760 laptop with the same finicky wireless card as me: the Intel 2200. This card has closed-source drivers although the guys at ipw2200.sourceforge.net have done their best to help us out. The drivers for this card have a habit of crashing systems, causing system hangups, and generally providing a wireless internet connection. Phil discusses how Kubuntu handles this card.
It was a little slow starting, compared to Knoppix or Slax. But that’s a trait of Live CDs, and I don’t really care. I like KDE 3.4! It has nice new popup tooltips on the kicker. They animate into view, but it is tasteful, not too flashy. The Trash icon has been moved from the desktop to the kicker, and good riddance.
Check out his article to read more.
I was thinking of trying out Ubuntu a while ago. It’s received excellent reviews from everyone I know who’s tried it and it promises to be a very friendly distribution.
There are two reasons that I didn’t try Ubuntu:
I’m not one to prefer a Mac just because it’s gorgeous, I need substance too. However, KDE has really hooked me with it’s power and slickness and I can’t give it up.
Luckily, there’s Kubuntu. Following the wonderfully vacuous naming scheme for KDE Kubuntu provides everything that Ubuntu does - but does it with KDE.
As of the time of this article KDE 3.4 is being uploaded to the Kubuntu servers. If somebody tries it out let me know how Kubuntu runs this excellent new release of KDE.
Yippee! We’ve got ourselves a real live report on a Linux installation. I love these because a person describing the installation process of a new distro of Linux helps everyone else in the world to prepare for when they take the leap.
Ubuntu is the subject of today’s installation, recorded at mrburnz.org. The author (Mr. Burnz I can only assume) reports:
I have to say I am impressed out how quick and painless it was–definitely the smoothest linux install I’ve done. The only device I will have to set up manually is my wireless card.
Five days later there is a post describing how even the wireless card was automatically prepared:
Turns out Ubuntu did detect my Atheros 802.11 a/b/g card during the install and set up the madwifi drivers. Wow. It is easily the best and simplest installer to date.
If anyone else has installed Ubuntu (or any other distro that was new to them), let me know about it. If you’d like to post the process as an article on Linux is Hard you’ll get full credit and linkbacks.
With all the choices for Linux distributions it’s common to jump around between them, always trying a new thing. Here’s a story of a man who finally settled with one he loves:
Ubuntu - My Final Distro>
Ubuntu utilizes the Debian packaging system, and I love it. It’s fast and stable. I can’t count how many times yum on Fedora Core 3 stalled randomly. Not to mention I find RPMs slow and annoying. Urpmi and the like just loved to spend time rebuilding indexes. Apt-get is nice and fast. Synaptic is a wonderful tool as well.
I’ve heard many stories of Linux users becoming faithful to a certain distribution, but never have I heard it so clearly argued and supported. I personally won’t be using Ubuntu because the aesthetics of KDE (Ubuntu lacks KDE) are important to me. Still, if it were for that one difference I’d switch immediately.
Neil Lucock tested Ubuntu (an increasingly popular Linux distribution) and commented on it’s value to a relatively new Linux user. I considered Ubuntu recently and I came to several of the same conclusions as Neil.
Neil tests the installation, networking, look and feel, and hardware support of Ubuntu on OSNews.com
The installer is visually unattractive but it works. It detected everything except my internet connection. I usually judge a distribution by how long it takes me to get on-line. Most detect the DHCP server on the modem and just work. If you can’t easily get on-line, how will you download fixes and upgrades? Once up and running, the connection was easy to configure and far easier than setting up Win XP.
Ultimately, Ubuntu lacks KDE (the most appealing window manager to new users) but has the Debian package system and therefore comes out as a moderate distribuion, but not ideal for new users.